Mary Sue Morrow Bücher

Focusing on late-eighteenth-century Germany, the book explores the lack of aesthetic theory to assess the rich instrumental music from composers like Haydn and Mozart. It develops a practical aesthetic theory based on an analysis of 1,300 music reviews from 1760 to 1798, highlighting interactions with contemporary literature and philosophy. The reviews reveal early interest in concepts such as genius, expressive power, and the importance of unity in music, suggesting these ideas emerged earlier than previously recognized.

Music aesthetics in late-eighteenth-century Germany has always been problematic because there was no aesthetic theory to evaluate the enormous amount of high-quality instrumental music produced by composers such as Haydn and Mozart. This book derives a practical aesthetic theory from an analysis of 1,300 reviews of instrumental music published in Germany between 1760 and 1798. The reviews document an intersection with trends in literature and philosophy, and reveal interest in criteria such as genius, the expressive power of music, and the necessity of unity, several decades earlier than has previously been supposed.