Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment
Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch

A collaborative study of the writings of Sulzer and Koch and their philosophical and musical thought.

Heinrich Christoph Koch (Author), Johann Georg Sulzer (Author), Nancy Baker (Edited by), Thomas Christensen (Edited by)

9780521035095, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 December 2006

224 pages, 1 b/w illus. 8 music examples
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.339 kg

'… 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.' Musical Times

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Theory of music & musicology [AVA]