Ton versus Dichtung: Two Aesthetic Theories of the Symphonic Poem and Their Sources

摘要

The changing relationship between music and language is particularly relevant to the genre of the symphonic poem, as represented in the writings of Hanslick and Liszt—the founding fathers of the autonomy aesthetic and the heteronomy aesthetic—in relation to Hegel's theory of the expressive character of music. While Hanslick bent Hegel to serve his absolutist position better by interpreting Hegel's “spiritual content” as something purely “spiritual” that acts on compatible material, Liszt gave the same passage a programmatic twist by underlining the “content” that would be conveyed in words via music's program. In their writings, Hanslick and Liszt extended Hegel's argument for spiritual content in directions he probably never conceived.