Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment

Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch

Author: Koch, Heinrich Christoph
Author: Sulzer, Johann Georg
Editor: Baker, Nancy
Editor: Christensen, Thomas

the translations are elegant and thoughtfully done, with helpful annotations and there are useful introductory essays on Sulzer and Koch by the two editors ... the extracts translated provide... — Musical Times More…

ISBN: 9780521035095 (0521035090)
Edition Type: Paperback
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Pages: 224
Date Published: 14th Dec 2006
Series: Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis

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Foreword Ian Bent
Part I. Johann Georg Sulzer: General Theory of the Fine Arts (1771-74): Selected Articles
Introduction Thomas Christensen
1. Aesthetic foundations
2. The creative process
3. Musical issues
Part II. Heinrich Christoph Koch: Introductory Essay on Composition, Vol. II (1787)
Introduction Nancy Kovaleff Baker
Preface
Introduction
4. The aim and the inner nature of compositions and, above all, the way in which they arise
Index.

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Can an abstract theory of Empfindsamkeit aesthetics have any value to a musician wishing to study composition in the classical style? The eighteenth-century German theorist and pedagogue Heinrich Koch showed how this question could be answered with a resounding yes. Starting with the systematic aesthetic theory of the Swiss encyclopedist Johann Sulzer, Koch was creatively able to adapt Sulzer's conservative ideas on ethical mimesis and rhetoric to concrete problems of music analysis and composition. In this collaborative study, Thomas Christensen and Nancy Baker have translated and analysed selected writings of Sulzer and Koch respectively, bringing to life a little-known confluence of philosophical and musical thought from the German Enlightenment. Koch's appropriation of Sulzer's ideas to the service of music represents an important development in the evolution of Western musical thought.

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the translations are elegant and thoughtfully done, with helpful annotations and there are useful introductory essays on Sulzer and Koch by the two editors ... the extracts translated provide a very useful indication of the musical intellectual thought in German-speaking countries in the late 18th century

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