According to Hanslick, the beauty of music is not subjective feeling and emotion. Beautiful music is developed from the composer’s imagination, a musical idea expressed by an actual musical structure (form). The musical structure is made up of the composer’s theme and the content is the tones, rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and timbre of the composition. He compares music to art, referring to music as “tone-painting” (20).
Hanslick believes that in order for a person to intellectually understand the pleasure that music brings, a person must understand and appreciate the actual structure or form of the composer’s music. They must have the musical expertise to understand how the composer uses the tones he does to create his piece. If a person just considers how the music makes them feel, Hanslick believes “the aesthetical criterion of intellectual pleasure is lost to them; for all they would know, a fine cigar or piquant delicacy or a warm bath produces the same effect as a symphony” (59).
I don’t really agree with Hanslick. The majority of people who listen to music are not trained in music theory, but most of them believe that music has a deeper emotional effect than a “warm bath.” Also, many great musicians (many consider them geniuses), such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Paul McCartney had no formal music training- Hendrix and McCartney, both left handed, play their guitars upside down. So, in my opinion, the structure of the music doesn’t determine its beauty, it’s how the music is played. Is Mozart played out of tune by horrible musicians considered beautiful music?
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