What confuses me about Schopenhauer is that though he seems to detest lyrics as being the dominant aspect of a piece of music, he says that “in [this case], the musical art at once shows its power and superior capacity” (Page 448). I understand he’s saying that though the music was written for the words, it still overpowers the lyrics, but this given seems to test his theory that it would even matter what order in which the piece was composed. In essence, either way, all the lyrics can do is compliment or accentuate the music; I might even be inclined to argue that if lyrics were written secondary to the music, it would mean the piece may be lacking in general.
On page 450, Schopenhauer's critique of Beethoven (the composer as a whole, not a particular piece of his music) says to me that he is no longer addressing his theory on the metaphysics of music, but rather his own personal tastes in music. On page 447, I noted how Schopenhauer seems to believe that music must be a certain way, i.e., the bass at no less than an octave from the three upper voices, the triad remains in the third octave from the fundamental note, etc.; he essentially wants to see perfect harmony in all music. That is why I must correct my little “note to self” in the margin that says, “Schopenhauer would have loved Cream!” Perhaps the more appropriate band would be the Everly Brothers, Beatles (early), or Simon and Garfunkel, but considering Schopenhauer has begun to base his philosophy of music off of personal taste, I can’t take him too seriously anymore.
I agree that S's taste comes through at several points in his writing on music. But maybe we can go ahead and apply it to other music? For example, he writes about Rossini's opera as superior to Haydn's oratorio because he thinks the former had a musical idea first while the latter had a textual idea first, but maybe we could take a more subtle view about that relationship and bring instrumental music into the conversation as well.
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