The Orchestral Revolution

Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre

EMILY I. DOLAN

ii
ii

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Dolan, Emily I,
The orchestral revolution : Haydn and the technologies of timbre/ Emily I. Dolan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical-references and index.
ISBN 978-1-10?-02825-8 (Hardback)
1. Haydn, Joseph, 1732-1809-Critidsm and interpretation, 2. Instrumentation and
orchestration-History. 3. Orchestra-History-18th centmy, I. Title.
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 52 Lessonsat the ocularharpsichord

professed that "when it comes to musical color, the musician is left entirely to
his own devices;
' ' oreh estrati'on." 71
£1or that 1s
2 The idea of timbre
The notion of color, then, highlighted those aspects of music that were
difficult, skirted reason, and trafficked with the irrational. Tones
demanded a special vocabulary with which to discuss them; to trace the
metaphor of color in the eighteenth century is to trace those elements of
music that challenged contemporary notions of what music was and what
it could do. The next two chapters will explore the birth of the concept of "Pitch is nothing other than tone color measured in one direction"
timbre and the changing discourses about insti·uments in the eighteenth Arnold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre
1

century. The varied uses of the color metaphor during the century were
prereqnisites for the modern conception of timbre as musical color; the
analogy between color and timbre implies certain ways of conceptnahzmg An elusive object
music, To trace the history of timbre is, at the same time, to chart the
emergence of the modern conception of the power of music. Writing abont timbre is difficult. When Alexander Ellis translated
Hermann von Helmholtz's Lehre von den Tonempfindungenin 1885, he !- ;

avoided the word altogether on etymological grounds. "Timbre:' he wrote,

71 E. T. A. Hoffmann) Kreisleriana:"ExtremelyRandom Thoughts,"h·ans, in E. T. A. Hojfmann's
"properly a kettledrum, tl1en a helmet, then the coat of arms surmounted
Musical Writings:Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism,ed. D, Charlton
(Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 113, with a helmet, then the official stamp bearing that coat of arms (now used
in France for a postage label), and then the mark which declared a thing to
be what it pretends to be, Burns's 'guinea's stamp; is a foreign word, often
odiously mispronounced, and not worth preserving."2 Timbre evades
predse definition and rigorous analysis. Most descriptions of timbre are
negative, resorting to a description of what it is not: for instance, we say
that timbre is the quality that distinguishes a flute and an oboe when they
play the same pitch at the same dynamic level. Part of this reflects the
problems timbre posed to the science of acoustics: until Helmholtz's
,
i pioneering work in the mid nineteenth century, no one had attempted
I
! to explain the acoustical phenomena behind timbre. And explaining it ws1s
no small feat: the first part of Helmholtz's Lehre von den Tonempfindungen
(first published in 1863) was dedicated to the problem of timbre - called
Klangfarbe in this treatise - a problem that was, he wrote, "perfectly
puzzling" ("vollkommen riitselhaften"). His solution lay in his investi-
gations into what he called the form of vibration,that is, the occurrence of
upper partial tones in compound notes. Timbre, he found, depended on
the strength and weal<ness of the upper partials. Yet our perception of

1
"Die KlanghOhe ist nicht anderes als Klangfarbe, gemessen in einer Richtung." A. Schoenberg,
Harmonielehre(Vienna: Universal Edition, 1922), p. 506,
2
H. von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungenals physiologischeGrundlagefur die
Theorieder Musik (Braunschweig: J. Vieweg, 1863), trans, A. Ellis as On the Sensationsof Tone
(London: Longmans, Green, 1885), p. 24n. Ellis translated Klangfarbeas "quality of tone."
53
54 The idea of timbre
timbre - or at least what we generally think of as timbre - depends upon
other sonic dements snch as attack and decay as well as conntless other
noises: breaths and bow strokes, the taps and clacks produced by the
mechanism of an instrument and the body of the musician in the act of
performance. When listeners hear the envelope of a note with the attack
and decay cut off, they struggle to identify the instrument. 3 The
most accurate definitions become magnificently inclusive: W. Dixon
Ward, a founder of psychoacoustics, described timbre as a "wastebasket"
attribute - timbre is eve1ythingthat remains after accounting for a tone's
pitch and dynamic level.4
Within musical scholarship of the past hundred years, timbre has
occupied a decidedly marginal position. Traditionally, it has been con-
sidered a "secondary paran1eter)J; even if such a classification does not
necessarily impose a value judgment, questions of timbre have often been
ignored in analysis. Musicologists and theorists who turn to questions of
timbre must justify their analytic focus.5
But timbre is everywhere. Even when we cannot speak of pitch - with
instruments like cymbals, for exampk - we can still speak of timbre. And
although the overtone series plays a central role in shaping the timbre of a
tone, the absence of overtones does not imply an absence of timbre: the
pure sine wave has its own striking qualities which have been harnessed for
expressive ends. Yet, for all of its inescapability, timbre also has a history.
That is to say, there was a time before timbre. As we have noted, the word
itself entered musical discourse only in the eighteenth century. In Decem-
ber 1765, after an extended delay due to problems with censorship, the
final ten volnmes of Diderot's Encyclopedieappeared. In the article on
sound ("Son"), Jeail")acqnes Rousseau mentions the idea of timbre. He
begins: "There are three aspects of sound to consider: 1. the range between
low and high, 2. the degree of intensity between loud and quiet, 3. the
quality of its timbre, which is always subject to the comparison between
3 The psychologist James J. Gibson has discussed this phenomenon in The SensesConsideredas
PerceptualSystems(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966); P. Schaeffer, in TJ-aite des objetsmusicaux:
Essaisinterdisciplines(Paris: .Editions du Seuil, 1966), likewise also explores how manipulated
tones alter the perception and understanding of timbre.
4
w. D. Ward, "Psychoacoustics," in A. Glorig (ed.), Audiometty: Principlesand Practices
(Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co,, 1965)1 pp. 48-71, at p. 55.
5
Recent scholarship has seen an increase of attention to questions of timbre and orchestration.
John J,Shcinbaum, for example, has written on issues of orchestration in relation to Gustav
Mahler; he does not simply write about Mahler's orchestration, but thematizes his focus on
timbre. See "Adorno's Mahler anr;l the Timbral Outsider:' Journalof the RoyalMusical
Association,131/1 (2006), 38-82,
An elusiveobject 55
dullness and brightness, or between harshness or softness."6 After a
lengthy discussion of the acoustical foundations of pitch and volume -
the acoustical basis of which were understood at the time - Rousseau
turned his attention to the third aspect of sound:
The difference between sounds described by timbre cannot be accounted for by a
sound's pitch or volume. An oboe would be difficult to mistake for a flute: it could
not soften its sound to the same degree. The sound of a flute would always have a
certain je ne sais quoi of softness and pleasantness, while that of an oboe would
have a certain dryness and harshness, which makes it impossible to confuse the
two. What could we say about the different timbres of voices with the same force
and pitch?7
The problem for Rousseau and his contemporaries was that it was
challenging to say anything about timbre. He goes on to explain,
No one I know has examined this aspect, which may have as many difficulties as
the others since the quality of timbre cannot depend on the number of vibrations,
which determines whether a sound is low or high, or on the intensity of these
same vibrations, which determines whether a sound is loud or quiet. There must
therefore be found among the aspects of sound a third quality different from these
two that can explain this last property; this does not seem very easy to me; we
must refer to the Principesd'acoustiqueof M. Diderot if we wish to further address
this issue. 8
l1
The Principesgenerauxd'acoustiqueto which Rousseau referred was the I
1/
,II,
first of Diderot's Memoires sur differents sujets de mathematiques, pub- "
I
lished in 1748, The reference was a false one: Diderot's essay explores the
6
a
"II ya trois choses considerer dans le son: 1, le degre d'elcvation entre le grave & l'aig\t: 2, celui
de vehemence entre le fort & le foible: 3, & la qualite du timbre qui est encore susceptible de
a
comparaison du sourd l'Cclatant, ou de l'aigu au doux." J.-J.Rousseau, "Son," in D. Diderot
and J. d'Alembert (eds.), Encyclopidie:ou Dictionnaireraisonnedes sciences,des arts et des
mitiers (Paris, 1751-72), vol. XV, pp. 345-47, at p. 345.
7
a
"Quant la difference qui se trouve encore entr~ les sons par la qualite du timbre, il est
evident qu'elle ne tient ni au degre de gravite, ni m&me a celui de force. Un hautbois aura
a
beau se mettre exactement l'unisson d'une flUte, il aura beau radoucir le son au meme degre,
le son de la flUte aura toujours je ne sai quoi de doux & de moelleux, celui du hautbois je ne
sai quoi de sec & d'aigi·e, qui emp&chera qu'on ne puisse jamais les confondre. Que dirons-nous
des differents timbres des voix de mCme force & de mi':me porti!:e?" Ibid.
8
[P]ersonne que je sache n'a encore examine cette partie, qui peut-&tre, aussi-bien que les autres,
se trouvera avoir ses difficulte/l: c;ar la qualitC de timbre ne peut dependre, ni du nombre de
vibrations qui font le degre du grave U I'aigu, ni de la grandeur ou de la force de ces mCmes
i
vibrations qui fait le degre du fort au foible. II faudra done trouver dans les corps sonores
une troisieme modification diffCrente de ces deux, pour expliquer cette derniere propriete; ce
qui ne me paroit pas une chose trap aisee; ii faut recourir aux principesd'acoustiquede
M. Diderot, si l' on veut approfondir cette matiere." Ibid.
56 The idea of timbre
production of pitch, but does not tackle issues of tone quality. Rousseau
also defined timbre separntely in its own entry, attempting not only to
describe what timbre is, but also to explain the value of different qualities.
The entry runs to only four sentences in its entirety:
A sound's timbre describes its harshness or softness, its dullness or brightness. Soft
sounds, like those of a flute, ordinarily have little harshness; bright sounds are
often harsh, like those of the vielleor the oboe. There are even instruments, such
as the harpsichord, which are both dull and harsh at the same time; this is the
worst timbre. The beautiful timbre is that which combines softness with bright-
9
ness of soundi the violin is an example,
This brief article is notable as the first explicitly musical definition of the
concept of timbre, in isolation from particular performances. 10 It signaled a
major change within musical discourse, marking a turn toward concerns of
perception, a new attention to music's immediacies. As explored in Chapter
J, many eighteenth-century thinkers sought to connect music with notions
of imitation, since mnsic's meaning depended on how well it could depict,
imitate, or express human emotions or the outside world. When discus-
sions turned to music's immediate sensations, it was usually to show how
9
"Tymbre, s,m, en Musiquc-, on appelle ainsi cette qualitCdu son par laquelleil est aigre au doux.>
sourd ou eclatant. Les sons doux ant ordinairement peu d'edat comme de la fll1te;lessons ,
a
eclatants sont sujets l'aigreur, comme lessons de la vielle au du hautbois. ll ya meme des
instruments, tels que le clavecin, qui sont il.-la-foissourds & aigrcs, & c'est le plus mauvais tymbre.
Le beau tymbreest celui qui rellnit la douceur Ul'Cdat du son; on en peut donner le violin pour
exemple." Rousseau, "Tymbre;' in Diderot and d'Alembert (eds,), Encyclopedie, vol. XVI, p. 775.
Rousseau most likely wtote this article a number of years before it was published. He reports in his
Confessions, "The two authors had just been working on a DictionnaireEncycloj}edique [sic], which
was initially supposed to be nothing more than a translation of Chambers, similar to that of the
Dictionnairede medecineby James, which Diderot had just translated. He wanted me to contribute
something to this second enterprise, and he offered me the musical articles, which I accepted, and
which I executed in a great hurry and very badly during the three months he had given me and all
the other authors who were supposed to work on the enterprise, but I was the only one who
.finished in the agreed time," Confessions (Paris: Hatier, 1999), p. 119, quoted in P. Blom,
Enlighteningthe World:Encydopedie, the Bookthat'Changedthe Courseof History(New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 44--45. It is likely, then, the Rousseau's entry was written in 1749.
10 As late as the 1770s, Sulzer still argued that single musical tones were not inherently expres~ive;
it was only through thoughtful performance that tones became infused with expression: "One
can certainly hear passionate notes in music that are, by themselves and with no help of the
composer, painful, sad, tender, or gay. But such impressions come about through the artistry of
the singer and belong properly to performance. This has notl1ing to do with the writing of a
good melody, except perhaps in so far as the composition might offer the singer or player some
guidance as to how the written notes may be performed with feeling," J, G. Sulzer, Allgemeine
Theorieder schonenKilnste(Leipzig: Weidemann, 1771-74), trans, in N. K. Baker and
T, Christensen (eds.), Aestheticsand the Art of MusicalCompositionin the German
Enlightenment:SelectedWritingsof Johann GeorgSulzerand HeinrichChristophKoch
(Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 91-92.
Eighteenth-cent~,ytimbre 57
music that only provided pleasure through its sonorities was composition-
ally deficient. The idea that one could talk about and evaluate music's
sounds, outside of the context of a composition or performance, heralded
a new conception of music and musical instrmnents> one bound to new
ontologies of musical tone. Indeed, as this chapter will explore, our ability
'.o speak of tones as beautiful is conditioned by the messy interface of
mstruments and aesthetics that emerged in the eighteenth century.
Eighteenth-centurytimbre
Rousseau's definition of timbre marked the beb>inningof a new discourse
about instrumental sonority. Yet the language he used - his confined palette
of soft, harsh, bnght, dull - seems impoverished in comparison to the rich
language used by later writers to describe instrumental sound. Less than a
hundred years late1; Hector Berlioz drew upon a vast and colorful vocabu-
lary to describe instruments in his Grand traite d'instrumentation et
d'orchestrationmodernes(1844). Chapter 6 explores this rich text in more '
detail, but a brief glimpse is warranted here: the treatise often reads like a 111
I
sweeping introduction to a cast of characters. Berlioz informs us which I
instruments are pleasant, sweet, and joyous; which are grotesque, sad, or
melancholy; and which ought to be used more often and which should be
avoided. He rapturously tells us that "there is nothing like the telling
11
sweetness of twenty e strings activated by twenty well-controlled bows.
This is the orchestra's truly feminine voice, at once passionate and chaste
heart-rending and gentle, able to weep and moan and wail, or sing and i
unplore and dream, or break out in joy as no other instrument can."11 He :,J
;, I
c01~~lai~sthat violas are ,underu~ed, and en~icescomposers by speaking of
t~e part1cula1pun~ency' of the mstrument s lower register and the "espe-
cially sad and pass10nate character" of the higher notes. 12 The oboe for
Berlioz, fa~Isa a profoundly expressive instrument; for him, its "sp~cial
characteristics convey candor, nalve grace, sentimental delight, or the
suffering of weaker creatures.»13 By contrast the flute, he remarks> is an
instrument "almost lacking in expression:' 14 The bassoon has a "propensity !
·1
''
to sound grotesque when exposed": by employing the instrument's middle
11
H. Berli~z, Grand traite d'instrumentationet d.'orchestration
modernes(Paris: Schonenbergcr,
1844, rev, 1855), trans. H, .Macdonald as Berlioz'sOrchestrationTreatise:A Translationand
Commentaiy (Cambridge University Press 2002) p 34
12 13 '
14 Ibid., ' ' '
Ibid., p. 35. Ibid,, p. 104. p. 140.
58 The idea of timbre
register, Giacomo Meyerbeer was able to produce a "pale, cold, cadaverous
sound" in the resurrection of the nuns in Robertle diable,15
The difference between the two thinkers' perception of sonority is one of
kind and not merely degree, Rousseau defined timbre as a discrete concept,
but he did not assign it a place of importance within musical composition.
Recall that we saw in the previous chapter how he argued that the heart of
music lay in melody, which he equated with design; harmony and "sound"
(by which he implied timbre) were "merely colors:' By contrast, Berlioz
viewed the proper use of instrumental sonorities as fundamental to the
structure of music; correct co1nposition is impossible without an intimate
knowledge of the properties of instruments. The notion of timbre entered
musical discourse in two stages: first, it became a discrete concept; only later
did it become associated with color and character. This later transformation
will be explored in the next two chapters. Here we shall focus on the early
conception of timbre and what it can tell us about how people listened and
thought about music and musical instruments.
The etymology of "timbre" sheds light on its early meanings. Rousseau
was the first to define timbre in explicitly musicalterms, but the word has
a rich history and has been used for diverse concepts. The word was
derived from the Latin noun tympanum, meaning a drum or bell (which
is reflected by the original spelling tymbre in the Encyclopedie).In the fitst
edition of the Dictionnaire de /'Academic fran,oise (1694), "timbre" is
defined as a kind of bell with a clapper inside that is struck by a hammer.
In the third edition of 1740, the definition is expanded and hints at the
changing notion of timbre: "It is said sometimes, for the sound yielded by
the timbre [i.e., the bell]: this timbre is too bright:' 16 Timbre here is both
the bell that gives the sound, and the sound tl1at the bell makes. The fifth
edition of the Dictionnairede Trevoux ( 1752) - officially the Dictionnaire
universe/fran,ois et latin - lays bare the complexity of this word: the entry
first connects the word to "bell;' both cowbells and carillons, then quotes
the above passage from the Dictionnaire de l'Academiefran,oise to show
how it can be used to describe sound, and then, before giving definitions
of six other uses of "timbre," comments at length on the multiple and
sometimes elusive meanings of the word. 17 In the fourth edition of the
1
Ibid., pp. 113-14.
"
16
"II se dit quclquefois, pour Le son que rend le timbre. Ce timbre est trop Cclatant,""Timbre:'
in Dictionnairede l'AcadCmiefranroise, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1740),
vol. II, p. 770.
17
See Dictionnaireuniverse!franrois et latin, 7 vols, (Paris: La compagnie des libraires assodes,
1752), vol. Vil, pp. 87-88.
Eighteenth-centurytimbre 59
Dictionnaire de l'Academiefranroise (1762) timbre is explicitly linked to
the sound of the human voice: "It is used sometimes figuratively for even
the sound of the voice, And in this sense, one says of a beautiful voice:
there's a beautiful timbre. This voice has a silver timbre." 18 A similar
definition can be found in Jean-Fran,ois Ferand's Dictionnaire critique
de la languefran,aise (Marseille, 1787-88).
.When applied to sound in the eighteenth century, one meaning of
<'tu~bre" was sin1ply "resonance"; Rousseau himself used the word thus
in Emile, in a description of how a girl might seek to appear attractive:
She can already seek to give a pleasant turn to her gestures and a flattering accent
to _her voice) to mainlain her composure, walking lightly, assuming gracious
~tt1tudes, and choosing everytl1ing to her advantage. The voice's range increases)
it gets stronger and gains timbre; the arms are developed; tl1e step becomes sure;
and she sees that, however she is dressed, there is _anart of getting looked at. 19
The initial attention paid to instrumental sonority did not consider
instruments in a network of contrasting and complementary colors, but
rather evaluated each sonority on its own. Rousseau, rather than describ- ,I
I
ing t~e instruments' characters, evaluated their quality, measured against 'i,i
,
the smgle standard of the sound of singing voice. This is implicit in his '
.,.'·
'·,1
definition in Encyclopedie,in which he offered a ranking of the best and I•
worst timbres. His discussion was governed by a notion of beauty that is
halfway between early eighteenth-century conceptions of music and
Berlioz's view of instrumental timbre. In this period, instrumental son-
orities began to be granted real value, but their worth was nonetheless
dominated by the valne system that held vocal music in the highest
esteem.
Rousseau's conception of the beauty of instrumental tone - what we
might call his standard of the singing tone - points to another way of \,
thmkmg about voice and melody in this period. In addition to shape, flow,
and rhythm of melody, the actual sound of the singer's voice - her
nuances, her control, her timbre - was equally prized. Instruments that
! !
lB "11se pren d que Ique101s
< • •
figuremcnt pour Le son m&me de la voix. Et dans ce sens on <lit d'une
belle v~ix, Viola un beau timbre. Cette voix a un timbre arge.ntin.1'Dictionnairede l'AcadCmie
franroise,4th edn., 2 vols. (Paris: Bernard Brunet 1762) vol JI p 835
19 ) ' ' ' ' '
"On peut deja a a
chercher <1donner un tour agreable ses gestes, un accent flatteur sa voix) a
COl~p.oserSOU maintien, .\ marcher avec Jegerete) (l prendre des attitudes gracielJses, et i\
d~ms1r partout ses avantages. La voix s'etend, s'affermit, et prend du timbre; Jes bras se
~eveloppent, la dem~rche s'assu~~) et l'on s'apen;o~t que, de quelque maniere qu'on soit mise,
1
1Yaun art de se faire regarder. J.-J.Rousseau) Emile, ou De l'Cducation,4 vols. (Paris:
Duchesne) 1762), vol. IV, p. 32.
60 The idea of timbre
could imitate the voice were similady esteemed in this period. In the entry
on "Instrumentalmusik" in AllgemeineTheorieder schonenKunste,Johann
Georg Sulzer, writing with Johann Kirnberger, argued: "Among all instru-
ments that can produce expressive tones, the human voice is without
doubt the one to be preferred. One can deduce from this the fundamental
maxim, then, that the most excellent instrument is that which is most
capable of imitating the human voice. By this reasoning, the oboe is one
of the best:'20
Johann Joachim Quantz, in his Versucheiner Anweisung die Plate tras-
versierezu spielen(1752), advised that the "most pleasing sonnd (sonus)"
on the flute was that which is "more similar to a contralto than a soprano,
or which imitates the chest tones of the human voice:' 21 In other words,
he assumed that the tone of his instrument would be compared with the
human voice; his task was to give his readers more precise information
about how the flute imitated the voice. Throughout his treatise, singing
and flute playing are intimately linked.
This is especially apparent in the instruments that struggled the most to
imitate the voice, namely keyboard instruments. The common keyboard
instruments of the period either lacked the ability to sustain tones, as is the
case with clavichords, harpsichords, and pianos, or to vary the dynamic
level fluidly, as with organs and harpsichords. Part of this "problem"
belonged to the domain of performance, and could be "solved" through
proper technique; for example, at the beginning of his Versuchuber die
wahre Art das Clavierzu spielen,C. P. E. Bach complained,
Keyboardists can be heard who after torturous trouble have finally learned how
to make their instruments sound loathsome to an enlightened listener. Their
playing lacks roundness) clarity, forthrightness, and in their stead, one hears only
hacking, thumping, and stumbling. All other instruments have learned how to
sing. The keyboard alone has been left behind, its sustained style obliged to make
way for countless elaborate figures.22
20
Sulzer, AllgemeineTheorieder sch8nenKllnste,trans. in Bal<erand Christensen (eds.), Aesthetics
and the Art of Musical Compositionin the GermanEnlightenment,p. 97.
2-1 "Ueberhaupt ist auf der Fl6tc der Ton (s01ms) der allergef'alligste, welcher mebr einem
Contraalt als Sopran; oder wclcher denen T6nen, die man bey dem Menschen die Bruststimme
ncnnt, ahnlich ist." J,J,Quantz, VersucheinerAnweisungdie FIOtetraversierezu spielen;mit
verschiedenen,zur Befdrderungdesguten Geschmackesin der praktischenMusik dienlichen
Anmerkungenbegleitet,und mit Exempeln(Berlin: J. F. Voss, 1752), p. 41, trans. E. Reilly as On
Playingthe Flute (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985), p. 50.
22
C. P. E. Bach, Versuchllberdie wahreArt das Clavierzu spielen(Berlin: C. F. Hennig, 1753),
trans, W. J, Mitchell as Essayon the TrueArt of PlayingKeyboardInstruments(London: Cassel,
1951), p. 31.
Eighteenth-centurytimbre 61
The problem of singing keyboards also belonged to the realm of instru-
ment making. The invention of the pianoforte, of course, grew out of the
3
desire to give the performer more dynamic control over the music.2 In
the eighteenth century, the cembaloconforte e piano was one of a number
of new instruments invented to overcome the technological shortcomings
of existing keyboard instruments.
The period saw a flurry of activity surrounding "sustaining" keyboards.
The idea was not new: Leonardo da Vinci drew np sketches for a keyboard
instrument that used a rosined wheel to activate and sustain tones; the
earliest actual instrument was Hans Haiden's Geigenwerkof 1575. The
performer used a foot treadle to set a number of rosined wheels in motion.
When keys were depressed, the corresponding strings were lowered onto
these wheels. The speed of the wheels controlled the volume, so that by
varying the speed of the treadle the performer could implement a cres-
cendo or decrescendo. Various inventors attempted to improve upon
Haiden's design in the following centuries: C. P. E. Bach, for example,
praised a Bogenklavierby Johann Hohlfeld, writing that "the fine invention
of our celebrated Holefeld [sic], which mal<esit possible to increase or i
I
decrease the registration by means of pedals, while playing, has made the
harpsichord, particularly the single-manual kind, a much-improved
I
instrument, and, fortunately, eliminated all difficulties connected with
the performance of a piano. If only all harpsichords were similarly con-
structed as a tribute to good taste!"24 Most subsequent sustaining pianos
were built on the same basic hurdy-gurdy principles as Haiden's instru-
ment; that is, they used rosined wheels or bows to activate strings.
The most snccessful of these instruments in this period to combine the
tone and control of the human voice with the conveniences of a keyboard
was not actually a keyboard instrnment. Rather it was the armonica,
invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761 (Fig. 2.1). The glass harmonica,
as it is more commonly known, consisted of a series of tuned glass bowls
threaded onto a spindle, and set in motion by a foot treadle. The glass
harmonica was a sophisticated version of the musical glasses - water-filled
crystal glasses played by rubbing the rims. The musical glasses had become
increasingly popular in Europe in the decades leading up to Franklin's
23 The story of the invention of the piano is the subject of a number of studies, so I will not repeat
it here, See E. M, Good, Giraffes,BlackDragons,and OtherPianos:A TechnologimlHistoryfrom
Cristoforito the Modern Grand (Stanford University Press, 2001).
24 Bach, Essayon the TrueArt of PlayingKeyboardInstruments,pp. 368-69, In 1783 Bach wrote a
Sonatafitr das Bogenklavier,H280 (W65.48).
62 The idea of timbre
II
Fig. 2.1 An image of Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica. Franklin described his instrument in great
detail in his letter to Rev. Father Beccaria (July 13, 1762), which was later published in Experimentsand
Observationson Electricity,.1\1ade
at Philadelphiain America,by Benjamin Franklin,L.L.D,and F.R.S.To
whichareAdded, Lettersand Paperson PhilosophicalSubjects(London: David Henry, 1769), pp.427-33. For
practical purposes, the instrument's appearance echoed Newton's equation of sound and color: Frallklin
writes, "To distinguish the glasses the more readily to the eye, I have painted the apparent parts of the
glasses within side, every semitone white, and the other notes of the octave the seven prismatic colours,
viz. C red; D, orange; E) yellow; F, green; G, blue; A, Indigo; B, purple; and C, red again" (pp. 432-33).
''i
invention: Gluck was known to dazzle several audiences with his prowess
!
on the musical glasses; the Irish musician Richard Pockrich (c.1690-1759)
was especially famous for his performances of Handel's Water Music,
which he performed on a special set of glasses to which he gave the
name "the angelic organ."25 Franklin heard the musical glasses during
25
His instrument met a bitter end when a large sow gained entrance to his performance and
overturned it. See B. Boydell, "Mr. Pockrich and the Musical Glasses," Dublin Historical
Record,44 (1991), 25-33, and A. Hyatt King, "Some Notes on the Armonica," Monthly
MusicalRecord,86 (1956), 61-69.
Eighteenth-centurytimbre 63
a trip to England in 1757 and set to work improving the instrument;
his version allowed for a mnch easier execution of chords and passagework
and soon became immensely popular. Virtuoso performers such as
Marianne Kirchgessner and Marianne Davies toured with their glass
harmo11icas and a variety of c01nposers> including Mozart, wrote music
for the instrument.
Franklin himself described the instrument's tones as "incomparably
sweet beyond those of any other [instrument] ."26 As Heather Hadlock
has documented, many heard the glass harmonica as a perfect comple-
ment to the human voice: Ann Ford had already praised the musical
glasses as a dignified accompaniment to singing. That voice was often
gendered female: in 1785, a series of witty epigrams appeared in the
Whitehall Evening Post likening women to various instruments; first the
violin (in order to support the marrying of older women, who like fiddles,
improve with use and age), then the Aeolian harp, here a sign of incon-
stancy ("every note, or flat or sharp/depends upon the wind"). These
analogies were followed by the final one: "Woman, l say, Dame or Lass/
ls an Harmonica of Glass/Celestial and Complete . . . When rightly
touch'd, its every tone/Is ravishingly sweet."27
Fradklin's instrument impressed audiences both in Europe and America:
Philip Vickers Fithian recorded his impressions hearing the wealthy colonist
Robe1t Carter perform on the glass harmonica in Virginia in 1773:
It is the first time I have heard the Instrument. The Music is charming! He play'd,
Water parted from the Sea. - The Notes are dear and inexpressively Soft, they
swell aitd are inexpressively grand; & either it is because the sounds are new, and
therefore pleased me, or it is the most captivating Instrument I have Ever heard.
The sounds very much resemble the human voice, and in my opinion they far
exceed even the swelling Organ. 28
The composer and glass harmonica performer Karl Leopold Rollig
invented a keyboard version of the instrument; in a review of it in
Cramer's Magazin der Musik, the anthor begins by remarking, "most
readers will have had the opportunity to hear this indescribably beautiful
26
"L'arrhonica: Lettre del Signor Benjamin Franklin al padre Giambatista Beccaria regio
professore di fisca nell' universit<\ dell'Torino dall' Ingelsa recata nell' Italiano:' July 13, 1762
(Turin, 1769), in The Worksof BenjaminFranklin,ed. J, Sparks (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, & Co.,
1840)j vol. VI, pp. 245-50; quoted in H. Hadlock, "Sonorous Bodies: Women and the Glass
Harmonica," Joumal of the AmericanMusicologicalSociety,53/3 (2000), 507--41, at p. 508.
27
"Helicon Bag:' vVhit'ehall EveningPost(Dec. 13-15, 1785), 4.
28
Journaland Lettersof Philip VickersFithian, 1773-1774; A Plantation Tutorof the Old
Dominion,ed. H. D. Farish (Charlottesville: Dominion Books, 1968), p. 37.
 64 The idea of timbre
r Treatiseson instrumentation
instrument themselves, which exceeds the sweetness and softness of all
[other] tones, including the human voice."29 Consistently> writing about
the glass harmonica concentrated specifically on its sonority; the actual
music composed for and performed on the harmonica often does not
feature prominently, if at all, in discussions of the instrlllnent. Its tone was
beautiful, regardless of the music performed on it.
Like the concept and rhetoric of timbre, the glass harmonica reflected an
emerging fascination with 111usic'simmediate qualities: its striking tone
fostered discussions of sonority independent of particular performances.
The concept and the instrument each represent a different reaction to the
same phenomenon; yet both mark a midway point between early eighteenth-
century aesthetics and our modern conception of timbre. Rousseau ranked
instruments according to the beauty of their tones measured against the
voice; the sonority of the glass harmonica was likewise judged by the same
vocal standard. Underlying such comparisons is the idea of mimesis.
The glass harmonica's immediate sonority was considered beautiful in
and of itself, bnt importantly, that rhetoric was enabled by the instru-
ment's restricted range. Composers and performers did not have to discuss
the kind of music performed on it partly because the instrument's mech-
anism limited the range of styles it could perform. This was understood at
the time: Riillig, for example, in his Uber die Harmonika, ein Fragment
(1787), tells his readers that the glass harmonica could not perform music
filled with sudden changes of affect.' 0 The harmonica sidestepped the
criticisms lodged against so 1nuch instnunental 1nusic - the many accus-
ations that music without words careened through a dizzying number of
jarring transitions or that it resembled paint splattered upon a canvas.
Likewise, there was no question here of silly imitations of inappropriate
subjects, for the harmonica could imitate the one thing that was worth
imitating: the human voice. Not only was the glass harmonica considered
to approximate the human voice more closely than any previous instru-
ment, but it was praised for being an ideal voice, even better than human.
The harmonica distinguished itself by its ability to be discussed and
judged using the criteria previously reserved for vocal mnsic: it conformed
to the dominant aesthetics in both sound and style.
However, the glass harmonica was not a perfect instrument. Though
its tone enthralled its listeners, the many faults of its mechanism - its
29
"Instrumente. lnstrumentmacher," in Carl Friedrich Cramer (ed.), Magazin der Musik (1787),
! I 1389-99, at p. 1389,
30
Hadlock, "Sonorous Bodies," p. 521.
65
muddy lower register, slow response, inability to execute rapid pas-
sages, and its nasty habit of causing its performers to become ill -
ultimately undermined the instrument's usefulness. Critics often
doubted whether the glass harmonica was capable producing powerful
music. After a concert by glass harmonica virtuoso Mai'ianne Kirch-
gessner, a reviewer for the Morning Chronicle remarked that "the
dulcet notes of the instrument would be delightful indeed, were they
more powerful and articulate; bnt that we believe the most perfect
execution of the instrument cannot make them. In a similar room,
and an audience less numerous, the effect 1nust be enchanting." 31
A number of inventors followed Riillig's example and attempted to
improve the glass harmonica by incorporating a keyboard to mediate
between the performer and the glasses. They hoped that this addition
would allow for more rapid execution and prevent the performer from
suffering nerve damage from direct contact with the vibrations of the
bowls. Starting in the 1780s, a string of inventors independently
produced keyboard harmonicas, with names such as the Tastenharmo-
nika and Clavier-harmonica. In spite of the efforts of these inventors,
these experiments proved unsuccessful; not only were the tones still
slow to speak, but the keyboard removed the nuance possible when a
performer played directly on the glasses.32 Although these experiments
led to an obsession with instruments that captured the ideal voice of
nature early in the nineteenth century, the glass harmonica and the
other instruments it inspired were later relegated to the margins of
organology. 33 To rediscover them - and to understand why they
intrigued inventors and delighted audiences - is to arrive at a new
understanding of the kind of attention paid to instrumental sonority
in this period.
Treatises on instrumentation
The singing voice offered both rational text and the sensual immediacies
of tone. The sound of the singing voice conld imply the presence
31
Anon., "Sixth Concert: 17th March 1794. Mr. Salomon's Concert. Hanover Square:' Moming
Chronicle(Mar. 18, 1794), quoted in H. C.R. Landon, The Symphoniesof JosephHaydn
{London: Universal Edition, 1955), p. 515.
32
For a thorough discussion of the history of the Tastenharmunikaand similar instruments see,
P. Sterk!, KlingendeGliiser(Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 53ff.
33
See E. L Dolan, "E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Ethereal Technologies of 'Nature Music,"'
Eighteenth-CenturyMusic, 5/1 (2008), 7-26.
66 The idea of timbre
of a suug text and therefore suggest the text's meaningfulness: the
instruments designed to imitate it drew upon that meaningfulness
while remaining estranged from it. Singing tone was an imp.erative in
good instrumental playing, and it was manifest as well in treatises on
instrumentation that began to appear in the mid-eighteenth centmy.
These eady instrumentation treatises are only rarely discussed in the
secondary literature, and when they are mentioned, they are treated
merely as precursors to Berlioz. 34 This teleological approach glosses over
many of the intricacies of these treatises; worse, it prevents us from
understanding these documents on their own terms, and seeing how
they attest to the compositional concerns and the ways of listening of
their period.
We can identify a collection of eighteenth-century instrumentation
treatises that share the same basic approach to instruments, despite beii1g
published over the course of a number of years. One of the earliest
systematic discussions of instruments can be found in Ancelet's Observa-
tions sur la musique, /es musiciens, et les instruments of 1757. This small
pamphlet is not a true instrumentation treatise, since it does not give any
technical information about the instruments discussed. Ancelet does,
however, reveal much about his conception of the value of the different
instruments and the relationship between a composition and the instru-
ments that execute it. Like Rousseau, he praises the violin: "It is certain:'
Ancelet writes, "that the violin is the most beautiful and most perfect of
the instruments, because of its quality of sound, its range, and its execu-
tion, which embraces all kinds and characters of music." 35 As this passage
suggests, Ancelet held that instruments should be evaluated for their
expressive compass, a view shared by many of his contemporaries. 36 The
34
Hans Bartenstein, for example, is flrst and foremost concerned with identifying those moments
that point toward Berlioz's conception of instrumental character and the role of orchestration
within a composition as a whole, See his "Die frnhen Instrumentationslehren bis zu Berlioz:'
Archivfiir Musikwissenschaft,28/2 (1971), 97-118.
35
"Il est certain que le violin est le phis beau & le plus parfuit des instrumcns, par la qualite du
son, par son etendue & par son execution, qui embrasse tousles genres & !es caracteres de
Musique," Ancelet, Observationssur la musique,Jesmusiciens,et Jesinstruments(Amsterdam:
Aux dCpens de la compagnie, 1757; repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1984), p. 11.
36
'fhis is not to say that the notion that instruments had their own characters was totally foreign.
Rousseau, in the entry on "Instruments" in the Bncyclopedie, noted that "the character of
instruments forms a very important part of the composer's study. They are the different voices
through which he speaks to our cars." Quoted and trans. in D. Charlton, FrenchOpera,
1730-1830:Meaning and Media (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2000), section V, pp, 1-31, at p. 3,
Rousseau's notion of character differs, I believe, from later eighteenth~ceutury concepti0ns of
instrumental character.
Treatiseson instrumentation 67
flute, for example, is not suited for styles of music such as "the airs of
de1nons, furies, warriors, storms, sailors, and many others"; rather it
should be reserved for "tender and pathetic pieces, accompaniments, small
airs and brunettes,and in Sonatas and the Concertos it should be reserved
for the best masters who do not misuse it:m
Rather than embracing each instrument for its particular chm-acteris-
tics, then, Ancelet sees any specific characteristics as limitations. His
notion of instrumental sonority is therefore pragmatic - some instru-
ments can be employed in all situations, and are very useful; others
cannot, and are therefore of limited use. Furthermore, Ancelet's concep-
tion of the relationship between instruments and tompositions reveals
much about a broader conception of "character)) in music. Character, for
Ancelet, arises first and foremost through aspects of composition unre-
lated to instrumentation; well-chosen instruments serve to embellish and
enliven the preexisting musical character. In Berlioz's orchestration trea-
I
tise, by contrast, instruments will appear as the foundation for musical
character: the composer draws upon the individual character of the
instruments to create the overall character of the music. 38
Technical treatises on instruments appeared only a few years after
A:ncelet's pamphlet. In 1764, the clarinetist Valentine Roeser published a
modest treatise, Essaid'instruction:A /'usagede ceux qui composentpour la 11:,,1
clarinetteet le cor.Avec des remarquessur l'harmonie et des exemplesa deux ,,, I
clarinettes,deux cars et deux bassons.Roeser provides the composer with
basic technical information about the two instruments: the keys in which
the instruments were manufactured, their range, notation, and so forth.
About the clarinet, he explains: I'
'.1,,,
We distinguish up to three kinds of sound in the Clarinet; the first, which is from {j
Fa in the small octave up to Sib of the first octave, is called Chalumeaubecause it I'
1'1,
is very soft. The second, which is from Si~natural of the first octave to Ut#, is I,''
called Clarionor Clarinette,because it is more sonorous and brilliant. The third,
37
"Si !'on veut parler exactement sur le chapitre de la FIUte, on conviendra qu'elle n'embrasse pas
tousles gemes & les caracteres de Musique, tels que sont les airs de Demons, de Furies, de
Guerriers, de TempCtes, de Matelots, & de plusieurs autres, clans lesquels elle n'est pas du
moins employee en principal: elle sent done mieux placee dans les morceaux tendres & 1.
pathetiques, dans les accompagnemens, dans les petits airs & !es brunettes, que clans Jes Sonates
& les Concerto rCserves aux meilleurs Maitres, qui ne doivent point eux-mCmes en abuser."
Ancelet, Observationssur la musique,les musiciens,et Jesinstruments,pp. 27-28.
38
Ancelet's notion of instrumental sonority is also entrenched in a performative notion of timbre:
each instrument is introduced with names of the leading masters on the instrument, past and
present.
68 The idea of timbre
which is from lhe Re of the third Octave up to Fa, could be called sharp, because it
is very strong and we cannot soften it like the former ones. 39
Roeser's description of the clarinet's tone employs the same language as
Roussean's definition of timbre: rather than describing the character of the
different registers of the instrument, he informs the reader (and would-be
composer) when the clarinet sounds soft, bright, and sharp. At the end of
the section, Roeser suggests that although he has many other things to say
about the clarinet, he
is afraid of making this small work too obscure and of befogging the Reader. The
most certain rule, and the best for composing for the clarinet, is to aim to produce
a pleasant and natural melody, to avoid large leaps and overly chromatic features:
finally, follow the rule that says: one needs to compose or to sing for the heart and
ear, to touch, and not to astonish, 40
After explaining the technical properties of the horn, Roeser concludes the
treatise with examples of how the clarinet and horn might be used in
combination with bassoons. The treatise concludes with examples of six-
part wind writing, and sage words of advice about avoiding fifths and
thirds in the bassoons in order to maintain a clear harmony. He stresses
compositional clarity; issues of expression and of character do not enter
into his discussion. Roeser is most concerned with what contributes to
mnsical beauty. Knowing how to handle the instrument in different keys is
essential to making it sound beautiful.
Louis-Joseph Francoeur's more comprehensive Diapasongeneralde taus
/es instrumentsavent (1772) encompassed nearly all instruments in cnrrent
use (he omitted iµstruments such as the musette, fife, sackbut, and cornet).
Francoenr's treatise resembles that of Roeser: it is devoted chiefly to supply-
ing the reader with precise technical information about each instrument but
39
"On distingue jus qu'a trois sortes dans l'etendue de la clarinette; le premier qui est depuis
le Fa de la petite Octave jusqu' au Si b, mol de la premiere Octave, est appellCChalumeau, parce
qdil est trCs dome. Le second q\1i est depuis le Si naturel de la premiere Octave jus qu'a
l'Ut # de la troisieme est appelle Clairon ou Clarinette parce qu'il est plus sonore et plus
brillant. Le troisiCme qui est depuis le Re de la troisiCme Octave jusqui'au Fa, pcut etre
appelli§aigU,parce qu'il est tres fort et qu'on ne peut l'adoucir comme les precedents."
V. Roeser, Essaid'instruction:A ['usagede ceux qui composentpour la clarinetteet le cor,Avec
des remarquessur l'harmonieet des exemplesa deux clarinettes,deux corset deux bassons
(Paris: Le Menu & Casteaux, 1764; repr., Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), pp, 3-4.
40
"contentC d'en donner les rCglesles plus nCcessaires:craignant de rendre ce petit Ouvrage trap
obscur et embrouiller le Lecteur. La RCglela plus sure et la meilleure de Composer pour la
Clarinette, c'est d'avoir pour but un Chant agrCable-etnature!, d'Cviter grands [saults] et les
Traits trap Chramatique. En fin de suivre la rCglequi dit: qu'il faut Composer ou Chanter pour
le Cceur et !'Oreille; i1faut toucher et ne pas etonner." Ibid,,p. 12,
Treatiseson instrumentation 69
draws upon a richer vocabula1y. He tells us the flute is suited to pieces that
are "slow and pathetic:' and that the flauto piccolo"perfecrly imitates the
songs of birds and nightingales:' 41 In the section on the clarinet, he not only
touches upon the sound qualities of the different registers of the instrument,
as Roeser did, but also includes a lengthy section entitled "De la qualite du
son, et de la propriete de chaque espece de clarinettes." According to
Francoeur, the clarinet in G is the "largest and softest" of the clarinet family,
and is not commonly used in orchestras; its sound "is sad and lugnbrious,
which is why one makes nse of it only for somber effects and in funeral
pieces.')42 The clarinet in A, by contrast, '(has an extremely soft tone, 1nuch
less dark and with a greater range than that in G. It is appropriate to tender
43
and gracious airs:' The clarinets in B-flat and B-natural, C, and D are very
sonorous, and appropriate to ((very noisy pieces, such as overtures, sy1n-
phonies, and lively airs"; the clarinet in C is particularly appropriate for the
((noise of wat:' 44 Like Ancelet, Francoeur discusses the instruments in tenns
of the characters to which they are appropriate; however, his description of
the different clarinets goes beyond their mechanisms: he attributes to each
size of clarinet its own emotionalcharacter.
Othon Vandenbroeck's Traite general de taus /es instruments a vent a
/'usagedes compositeurs(1793) is similarly focused on the mechanisms of
the instruments. The main section of the treatise is devoted to the horn;
the other instruments are disposed of in cursory fashion. Vandenbroeck
rarely addresses issues of tone quality: rather he focuses on instruments'
range and chromatic capability. Only in his discussion of the oboe does he
remark, "The oboe is a very old instrument, which beautifully approxi-
mates the human voice, in particular the female voice:' 45 Like the earlier
writers, then, Vandenbroeck prizes those instruments that offer the
greatest flexibility and voice-like beauty.
Attention to sonority also crept into musical discussions not devoted to
the handling of instruments. In 1773 Johann Friedrich Dau be ( 1730-1797)
41
L.-J, firancoeur, Diapasongeneralde i-ousles instrumentsavent avecdesobservationssur chacun
d'eux (Paris: Des Lauriers, 1772; repr. Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), pp. 2, 9,
42
"le Son en est triste et lugubre c'est pomquoy on n'en fait usage que dans les effets sombres et
les morceaux fonCbres."Ibid., p. 23.
43
"a le son fort doux beaucoup moins sombre et a plus d'Ctendue que celle en Sol, elle est propre
aux airs tendres et grncieux &c." Ibid., p. 23, i
:,1
44
"Elle est propre aux morceaux de grand bruit, commc Ouvertures, Simphonies, Airs vifs, &c,"
Ibid., p. 24.
45
"Le Hautbois est un Instrument trCSancien et qLiiapproche beaucoup de la voix humaine
prindpalement de la voix de femme," 0. Vandenbroeck, Trait-e generalde tousles instrumentsa
vent a/'usagedes compositeurs(Paris: Boyer, 1793; repr, Geneva: Minkoff, 1974), p. 58.

70 The idea of timbre
published his comprehensive composition treatise Der musikalischeDilet-
tant: Eine Abhandlung der Komposition.16 Throughout the treatise, Daube
continually instructs his reader to pay attention to the immediate sound of
the musical material. For example, in the section on harmony and chords,
he discusses the effect of spacing and instrumentation:
the effect of harmony is multifarious. A chord in which the intervals are spread
out far from one another creates an altogether different impression than a chord
in which they are quite close together. Furthermore, the ruling chord in C major,
for example, sounds excellent when it is heard in the middle of the scale. Its effect
is good on the organ, harpsichord, or piano, but still better when played by two
violins and a violoncello. If it is heard on wind instruments of one family or of
several, with or without string instruments, the effect is different in each case.47
Instrumentation is also a concern for contrapuntal passages:
one especially must make certain to choose instruments capable of imitation.
Likewise, the motives or figures to be imitated must be selected in accordance with
the nature of the instruments. For example) a figutc from the main melody would
be suitable for imitation by the second voice>and probably by the viola) but not by
the brass. 48
Like the instrumentation treatises of this period, Daube's discussion of
the immediate sonnd of instruments focnses primarily on questions of
beauty and clarity: the composer should take care to use instruments in
ways that best suit the harmony and textme of the piece. Yet he also is
aware of the effect that instrumentation has on musical expression:
It remains true that the characteristic tone quality of each instrument also contrib-
utes greatly to the expression of the affects. The unison is said to exactly coincide
among all the instruments, and yet everyone, even one uninformed about music,
hears the difference between each of the instruments, All insti;uments used during
antiquity as well as at the present time differ from one another in tone quality) [a
characteristic] which results from the nature of the instrument and remains
peculiar to it alone. 49
In his preface to the translated edition of Daube's treatise, Ian Bent
remarks that Danbe has "an awareness of the sonic world of music that
46
Before the publication of the treatise in 1773, Dnube produced a weekly publication, published
by Joseph KU.rzbockenand called Der musikalischeDilettante,which largely reproduced the
information contained in Daube's 1756 treatise Geneml-Bafi.This serial publication should not
47
be confused with the 1773 treatise.
J. F. Dnube, Der musikalischeDilettant:Eine Abhandlungder Komposition(1773), trans.
S. P. Snook-Luther ns The MusicalDilettante:A Treatiseon Compositionby J, F. Daube
(Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 37-38,
48
Ibid., pp. 144-45. 49
Ibid., pp. 38-39.
f
The beginningof Enlightenmentaesthetics 71
we do not associate with eighteenth-century writing about 1nusic."50
Indeed, as Bent points out, Koch makes no mention of tone quality in
his considerably later treatise on composition, However, these treatises did
not discnss instrumental sonority using the language of color and charac-
ter that became standard in the nineteenth century. The idea of timbre
that was rendered as Klangfarbein nineteenth-century Germany impli~d
the presence of a well-developed orchestral tradition, one that emerged
only dming the late eighteenth century, as the orchestra reached its final
solidification and consolidation. It was this context that allowed for
comparison: to speak of the color of an instrnment situates that instru-
ment in a spectrum of colors produced by an array of instruments. The
treatises of the eighteenth century, therefore, should not be seen as mere
precmsors: rather, they reveal a different value system at work. Their
emphasis on beautiful tone implicitly ranked certain sonorities as better
or worse than others. Yet this notion of beauty - that is, tl1e idea that
sonority could be beantiful in and of itself - was a necessary precursor to
the later conception of Klangfarbe.
The beginning of Enlightenment aesthetics
'
1.,!!
'; I
The new attention paid to instrumental sonority in this period forms part '
I;:
of a much larger development in the eighteenth century, namely, the birth
of modern aesthetics. That the concept of timbre should be tied - indeed
intimately bound up with - aesthetic discourse is not immediately obvi-
ous. "Aesthetics" came to mean the study of art and the inqniry into ideas
of beauty and ideal forms. But to equate aesthetics with the discourse of ,'
,,,
form and its attendant modes of inquiry is to leap ahead to the nineteentl1
century. The origins of the aesthetic were far more hnmble: before it was
bound to art and seeped with the language of idealism, aesthetics was the
study of the relationship between immediate sensation and the higher
orders of cognition. The aesthetic was that force which built steps between
the throne of cognition and the diverse, messy, and vibrant world of
sensation and feeling. Aesthetics in its original sense was, in Baumgarten's
words, "a science of how things are to be known by means of the senses,"51
a "science of sensitive cognition"; it was an inquiry into the ptocess by
50
Ibid., p. x,
5
l A, G. Baumgarten, Meditationesphilosophicaede nonnullisad poema pertinentibus(Halle:
J. Grunerti, 1735), pp. cxv-cxvi.
72 The idea of timbre
which our sensations of the outside world were translated into higher
orders of cognition, an exploration of how om· senses modulate the
outside world for our interior world of ideas. Aesthetics was a study of
mediation, and dealt in equal measure with irn1nediate sensation and
abstract reason.
Just as the birth of Enlightenment aesthetics was an inquiry into the
human senses and mediation, it also brought attention to objects - the
instruments - that functioned as extensions of the senses. The inextric-
ability of attention to timbre and the discourse of aesthetics is made
explicit in the philosophy of Johann Gottfried Herder, who turned to
music several times during his career. Although his writing on folk song
and his notion of the "religious contemplation" of music are familiar
today, a good deal of his writing on music remains little known. The same
is true of a large body of his philosophical writing: though Herder initiated
a wide range of philosophical inquiry, the subsequent generations of
philosophers who followed his lead - Hegel, Schleiermacher, and
Nietzsche, for example - are today better known. But it was precisely
because his scholarly interests were so catholic - ranging from the study of
the origin of language to the philosophy of history, from the theorization
of national culture to the remit of aesthetics - that it is today difficult to
pick any single text as representative of Herder's oeuvre. However, recent
scholarship has seen, if not a renaissance, at least a renewal of interest in
Herder's work. 52 We are slowly beginning to reassess the importance and
relevance of Herder's thought for later thinkers.
Herder first turned to music early in his career. In 1764, he took up
his first teaching position at the Domschule of Riga; in the years that
followed he published his first two books, Fragmente uber die neuere
deutsche Literatur (1766-67) and Kritische Walder oder, Betrachtungen,
die Wissenschaftund Kunst des Schonen betreffend,nach Massgabeneuerer
Schriften (1769), containing three "Critical Forests." He pnblished
anonymously, which was not an unusual practice for philosophers at this
52
See, for example, scholarship such as Herder:PhilosophicalWritings,ed. M. N. For~ter
(Cambridge University Press, 2002); M. Kessler and V. Leppin (eds.), Johann GottfriedHei~er:
AspekteseinesI,ebenswerkes(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005); J. Zammito, Kant, Herd~~and the Birth
of Anthropology(University of Chicago Press, 2002); J, G. Herder, SelectedWritingson.
Aesthetics,trans, G. Moore (Princeton University Press, 2006); M. Gelbart, The Invention of
"FolkMusic'' and "ArtMusic":EmergingCategoriesfrom Ossianto Wagner(Cambridge
University Press, 2007); H. Adler and W. Koepke (eds.), A Companionto the Wotks of Johann
GottfriedHerder(Rochester: Camden House, 2009); P. V. Bohlman, "Herder's Nineteenth
Century," Ninefeenth~CenturyMusic Review,7/1 (2010), 3-21.
The beginningof Enlightenmentaesthetics 73
time, and was shaken when his authorship was discovered." He aban-
doned the publication of the Viel'tes Wdldchen:Uber Riedels Theorie der
schonenKiinste(the fourth "Little Forest"); it was not published until well
after his death. While the first three Walderfocused primarily on the visual
and literary arts, the fourth included a lengthy discussion of music and a
proposal for a radical new aesthetics of music. 54
Central to his discussion of music was a critique of Rameau's theory of
the bassefondamental. As explored in the previous chapter, Rameau's ideas
in the Traite de l'harmonie faced considerable criticism in his lifetime,
despite his lasting influence on music theory. Because of Rameau's criti-
cisms of Rousseau, and his continued insistence that the corps sonore
was the fundamental principle behind a wide range of natural phenom-
enal Ra1neau 1nade enemies, smnewhat ironically, with d'Ale1nbert.
D'Alembert had, in 1752, helped popularize Rameau's theory with his
publication of Elemens de musique theorique et pratique suivant /es prin-
cipesde M. Rameau. But after Rameau's attacks on the musical entries in
;: ''i
the Encyclopedie,d'Alembert soon became openly critical of him. His entry
"fondamental" simmers with hostility and contempt for Rameau's theory:
What will we say about what has been suggestedlately,that geometry is founded .I
upon the resonance of the corpssonore,because geometry, it is said, is founded
upon proportions, and that the corpssonoregenerates them all? Geometricians
would not be grateful if we take seriously such assertions, We willpermit ourselves
only to say here that the consideration of proportions and progressions is entirely ·,,
,I
useless to the theory of musical art. 55 ',,'
I:: I
Thongh the criticisms of d' Alembert and Rousseau have been explored in
musical scholarship, Herder's critique has received far less attention. 'r
D'Alembert objected to Rameau's theory because so much of it was
: !,
based on sensory input rather than rigorous scientific reasoning;
Herder, on the other hand, believed that Rameau made too little of
sensory input. Pushing the entire discussion of music outside of the ,i!
53
On Herder's unmasking, see W. Koepke, Johann GottfriedHerder (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1987), pp. 16-20.
54
See R. E. Norton, Herder'sAestheticsand the EuropeanEnlightenment(Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991), pp. 150-56.
55
"Fondamental," in Diderot and d'Alembert (eds.), Encyclop{!die,trans. in T. Christensen,
Rameau and Musical Thoµght (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 262. See also
T. Christensen, "Music Theory as Scientific Propaganda: The Case of d'Alembert's Blemens
de musique,"Journalof the History of Ideas,50/3 (1989), 18-11, and "Eighteenth-Century
Science and the c01pssonore:The Scientific Background to Rameau's Principle of Harmony;'
Journalof Music Theory,31/1 (1987), 23-50.
74 The idea of timbre
realm of mathematics, Herder argued that the art of music lay not in the
generation of harmony or the primacy of melody, but in music's powerful
impact on the listener.
For Herder, aesthetics was as much a study of human perception as it
was an appraisal of works of art. As a whole, the Viertes Wiildchen
explores the role of sensation in cognition and aesthetic judgments.
The work was conceived as a critique of the theories of Friedrich Justus
Riedel. In 1767, Riedel had published his Theorie der schonen Kiinste und
Wissenschaften, in which he propounded his notion of how immediate,
umeflective sensations affected cognition; Herder set out to show how
sensation is never unreflective, and that it is impossible to separate
sensation from cognition and judgment. 56 Rather, all sensation implies
cognition. Herder writes:
To recognize a thing clearly, even in the slightest degree, means that one has
already distinguished it; and no distinction ever occurs without judgment> and a
judgment is no longer an immediate feeling, And to recognize something dis-
tinctly: that requires a clear cognition of its subordinate concepts as such, as the
distinguishing marks of the whole, and thus involves an act of the inner workings
of reason. 57
The idea that sensation always already implied cognition has deep impli-
cations for musical aesthetics. Whereas many eighteenth-century thinkers
were suspicions of music because it seemed so dependent on fleeting
sensations (and thus lacked appropriate educational and moral value),
Herder was able to embrace music because it stimulated judgment and
cognition. His discussion of music in the Viertes Wiildchen reveals that he
was familiar with Rameau)s 1nusical theory, Rousseau's -entries on 1nusic
for the Encyclopedie,and the various debates and conflicts surrounding the
primacy of melody or harmony and the corps sonore. Capitalizing on the
llnplications of his conception of sensation, Herder's radical move was to
insist aggressively that the human listener - and his bodily and mental
reaction to music - be made an integral part of the study of music. He
demands that the study of the musical art be a study of the ways in which
humans respond to tones, not the study of the physics of sound or the
calculation of mathematical ratios:
56
For an extended discussion of Ricdel's philosophy, see Norton, Herder'sAestheticsand the
EuropeanEnlightenment,pp. 159-62.
57
J. G. Herder, SiimmtlicheWerke,ed. B. Suphan (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung,
1877-1913), vol. IV, p. 6, quoted and trans. in Norton, Herder'sAestheticsand the European
Enlightenment;p. 162,
The beginningof Enlightenmentaesthetics 75
Physics and mathematics: how do they differentiate and determine tones? By the
oscillations of the string in a given time, by the proportion of the tensioned forc;e,
of the physical constitution and length. of the string. And what is it that is
calculated from these proportions in the tone? Nothing except proportions,
highness and lowness) strength and weakness, intervals, simultaneity and non-
simultaneity, etc.: nothing but proportions, which in the sciences) to which they
belong, suffice to recognize the tone in them, and from this knowledge to derive
consequences; however, as we shall see, they are worthless for the aesthetics of
tones. They explain nothing aboutsimpletones;nothingof theirforceon the senseof
hearing;nothingof their beauty,individuallyor combined;about everything,they
explainnothing.Thus [proportions] do not contain a single iota of the philosophy
of the beautiful in the art of tones [TonartigSchOnen].
58
For Herder, no true aesthetics of music existed yet; in his eyes, musical
discourse was still divided between the study of the mathematics of
music - as carried out by Euler, Diderot, Mersenne, Sauveur, and
cl'Alembert - and that of musical practice, such as the treatises by Leopold
Mozart, C. P. E. Bach, and Quantz. In particular, Herder took Rameau's
theory to task, for Rameau had attempted to unify theory and practice by
explaining both sides through mathematics: in Rameau's theory, acoustics ,,1
masqueraded as aesthetic theory: '
Still fewer concern themselves as to how tone, as tone, affectsus. Not the physicist,
I
,I
who knows it only as resonance. He trackt; it from the string through the air, from
the air to the ear, through the entire organ of hearing to the nerves, but still only as
resonance. Thus how can he know how resonance affects the nerves when it is no
longer resonance, but a simple tone? How this tone functions in the soul and
moves it?59
58
"Physik und Mathematik, wie unterscheiden und bestimmen die TOne?Aus den Schwingungen
der Saite in einer gegebnen Zeit, nach Proportion des spannenden Gewichts, des KOrperlichen
Inhalts und der Lange der Saite. Und was ists, was aus diesen Verhiiltnissen im Tone selbst
bcrechnet wird? Nkhts als selbst Verhiiltnissen, H6hen und Tiefen, Stiirke und Schwiiche,
Intervallen, Gleich- und Unglcichzeitiges usw. lauter Verhiiltnisse, die in den Wissenschaften,
fi.ir die sie gehOren genug sind, im in ihnen den Ton zu erkennen, und ans dicsen Kiinntissen
Folgen abzuleiten, die aber, wie wir sehen wollen, fi.ir die .Asthetik der Tone durchaus nichts
sind. Sie ~rklaten nichts vom einfachenTOneselbst,·nichts von der Energiedesselbenaufs GehOr;
nichtsvon derAnmut derselben,einzelnund in der Folge;von allemNichts.Es gibt also mit lhnen
noch kein Jota zur Philosophic des Tonartig Sch6nen." Herder, ViertesWiildchen,in Werke,vol.
II; Herderund die Anthropologieder Aufklarung,ed. W. Pross (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag,
1987), p. 140,
59
"Noch weniger bekilmmern sich beide, wie Ton als Ton auf uns wUrkt'.Nicht der Physike1;
der ihn bloB als Schall kcnnct. Der verfolgt ihn van Saite <lurch die Luft, van Luft zum Ohr,
<lurch alle Geht:irgiinge des Olll'Szur Nerve; aber nach immer als Schall. Wie will er also wissen,
wie die Nerve von dem, was nicht mehr Schall, was nur einfacher Ton ist, getroffon wird?
wie dieser in die Seele wili·kt, und sie bewegt?" Ibid., p. 142.
 ' ,
76 The idea of timbre
Rameau's theory came no closer to providing a true philosophy of music,
for Rameau only saw single tones as corporeal manifestations of an
underlying abstract concept, expressible as a series of mathematical ratios
and proportions. Herder writes:
The relationshipof the overtones,says Rameau, which one hears resonating espe-
cially in the main tone of a long string, and which make up his great, perfected
chord. One knows that Rameau built his entire harmony from this experience,
and his interpreter, d'Alembert>his entire system of music. Now, it does not
concern us here from which principle one can explain and produce all musical
laws, or whether the Rameauian one - which I very much doubt - is the main
principle. But it is certain that this does not in the least explain the effect of music
on the soul.60
For Herder, the question was not whether Rameau's theory of the corps
sonorewas true or not; rather he believed that the study of music could not
begin with the study of harmony. Like Rameau, Herder believed harmony
to be a natural phenomenon: Rameau took that belief as the foundation of
his musical theory; Herder used the same notion to dismiss harmony as an
aestheticelement. If chords were the natural outcome of the resonance of
sounding bodies, as Rameau believed them to be, then they were unable to
inform an nnderstanding of how a tone affects a human listener. The
distinction between resonance (Scha/0 and tone (Ton) is important for
Herder: the former implies a kind of composite of natural phenomena,
while the latter belongs properly to the realm of aesthetics. Resonance is
what is out there; tone is what we experience.
Even if Rameau's account were, in and of itself, as true as it today perhaps appears
to be false,for the philosopherof tone-pleasure(Wohllaut],it is a dry, one-sided,
sterile experience, Chords are mere resonance, and all harmonies of chords are
mere resonance ... Students of tone-pleasure, do you thereby comprehend even
the smallest part of the inner being of a tone? Of the power of a single accent over
the soul?61
60
"Verhilltnisin den Beit0nen,sagt Rameau, die man insonderheit bei einer groben Saite dem
Haupttone nachschallen horet, und die seinen gr6Ben vollkommenen Akkord ausmachen.
Man weiE, daB Rameauauf diese Erfahrung alle seine Harmonie, und sein Erkliirer d'Alembert
sein ganzes System von Musik gebauet hat. Nun gehts uns hier nicht an) aus welchem
Gnmdsatze man alle Hauptgesetze der Musik erklaren und hervorwiilzen kiinne;noch ob der
Rameausche, wie ich sehr zweifle,der erste Grundsatz sei; abet das ist gewiB,daB dieser die
Wilrkung der Musil<auf die Seele gar nicht erklare," Ibid,) p. 143,
61
"Ware die Rameausche Erfahrung also auch an sich so wahr, als sic jetzt schon vielleicht an sich
scheinbare Unwahrheit ist, fi.irden Philosophen des Wohllauts ist sie eine trockne, einseitige,
unfruchtbare Erfahnmg. Akkord ist nur Schall, und alle Harmonien von Akkorden nur
The beginningof Enlightenmentaesthetics 77
Herder's demand that the "philosopher of tone-pleasure" turn away from
the study of harmony did not imply that he located the true heart of music
within melody, as other writers in the eighteenth century did. Rather he
advocated the study of singletones and how they penetrate the soul of the
listener at "the first moment of sensation)) Cerste Mo111entder Sensa-
tion"), He writes, "[The] ea,; as an ea,; cannot senseproportions ... the
basis of all music lies in the first moment of sensation, in simple tone-
pleasure."62Herder, like Hegel after him, adopted Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz's concept of the monad, a simple substance "where no parts,
neither extension, nor figure, nor divisibility is possible:' 63 Single tones,
when considered aesthetically as tones and not mathematically as reson-
ance, admit no division; they are characterized by their own "accents of
passion," and can combine to produce melody:
First nothing but simple, effective moments in music) single pitched accents of
passion - that is the first thing (the student of music) feels and collects, and this
becomes a musicalmonadology,a philosophy of the elementsof music.Because ifhe
connects them by the chain of succession) by the pleasure they cause the ear, by
their effect on the soul, it becomes melody. 64
The power that Herder found in musical monads was something that
was not understood through physics: he heard a quality in single tones
that went beyond volume and pitch:
Experience shows that certain, distinct tones make different impressions on us,
independent of their height or depth, strength or weakness, length or shortness, by
their inner nature. The one strikes us, as it were, more smoothly and brightly;
another, roughly and more gloomily. The one seems to wake up and elevate our
nerves, the other turns them down and puts them to sleep. The one strains them
into astonishment, another melts them into gentle feeling. This is our experience,
and it should become our fw1damental principle. 65
Schalle ... Schiilerdes Wohllauts weiBestdu damit auch <laskleinste Etwas vom innerlichen
Moment Eines Tones?Etwasvon Einer Kraft Bines einzelnen Accentsauf die Seele?"Ibid,,p. 160.
62
"Ohr, als Ohr kein Verhiiltnisempfinden kann, und dochim erstenMoment der Sensation,im
simplen Wohllaut,die BasisallerMusik liegt."Ibid., p. 144.
63
See G. W. von Leibniz, Monadologyand Other PhilosophicalEssays,trans. P. Schrecker and
A. M. Schrecker (New York: Macmillan/Library of Liberal Arts, 1965).
M "Erst lauter einfache, wlirksame Momente der Musik, einzelne Tonaccente der Leidenschaft -
das ist <lasErste, was [der Schiiler der Musik] fiihlt und sammlet, und <laswird cine
MusikalischeMonadologie,eine Philosophic ihrerElemente.Denn verbindet er sic <lurchdas
Band der Folge,in ihrer Annehmlichkeit auf Ohr, in iluer Worksamkeit auf die Seele:das wird
Melodie." Herder, ViertesWaldchen,in Werki;vol. II, p. 161.
65
"Es ist Erfahi'Ung,classgewisseeinfache Tcine,unabhangig von HOhe und Tiefe, von Starke und
Schwiiche,von Lange und Kiirze, if1rerinnernArt nach,verschiedne Eindrilcke auf uns machen.
I'
78 The idea of timbre
Herder, of course, describes timbre in this passage - it is the quality that
remains beyond pitch and volume. He even refers to the word itself ("so
far the French call it timbre"). He continues, appealing to a listener:
You, you who know nothing but the strength and weakness) of the height and
depth of a tone, pay attention: does the sound of a flute and of a shawm, a lute and
violin, a trumpet and a Nachthorn-where no strength or weal<11ess,no height and
depth can be the topic of discussion - still have the same natureand, as it were, a
specificsubstanceof sound?Does each of these sounds have the same effect on your
feeling?66
Like so many other writers, Herder is forced here to define timbre
negatively; he can only say that it depends neither on the number of
vibrations nor on their intensity. But the difference between timbre and
other qualities like pitch and volume is greater for Herder, who clearly sees
timbre as something distinct from pitch and volume, governed by an
entirely different set of criteria. Pitch and volume were measurable,
abstract qualities; timbre was embodied and immediately sensible. That
timbre was, at the time, intractable to scientific analysis only bolstered its
non-mathematical status; timbre wasn't a quality, but it was the direct
experience of the tone itself.
Rudolf Bockholdt pointed out an irony in Herder's argument in a brief
essay on Herder's Viertes Wiildchen:naturally, the production of timbre
has a physkal explanation. Indeed, timbre originates in the subtleties of
the overtone series, the very same phenomenon that Herder rejected in
this same text. 67 But though Herder might have been surprised to learn
that timbre was dependent on the overtone series, it would not impinge
on his larger argument. A physical description of timbre would hardly
have satisfied his demand for a musical monadology: he longed for a study
of how the tones affected the listener, not how they were produced. And
Der eine triffi uns gleichsam glatter und heller; ein ander rauher und finstrer. Der eine scheit
unsre Nerve aufzuwecken und zu erheben; der andre niederzuschmiegen und cinzuschlafern.
Der einc strengt sie zum Staunen an; ein andrer schmelzt sie in sanftes Gefi.ihlhin - dies ist
Erfahrung, tJnd sie soil uns Grundsatz werden." Ibid., p. 146.
66
Du, der du von Nichts als von Starke und Schwiiche,von HOhe und Tiefe der Tone einen
Begriffhast, gib Acht, ob der Schall einer FlOteund einer Schallmei, eine Laute und Geige,
einer Trompete und einest Nachthorns auch in der Vcrmischung aller TOne,wo von keiner
Stii.rkeund Schwii.che,von keiner HOhe und 'fiefe die Rede sein kann>noch EinerlieArt und
gleichsam Eine specifischeMassedes Klangeshabe? Ob jeder dieser ganzen Schalle gleiche
Wilrkung auf Deine Empfindbarkeit habe?" Ibid., p. 147,
67
R. Bockholdt, '"Von unten herauf,' nicht 'von oben herab': Zu Herders Betrachtungen iiber
Kunst und Musik," Musik Tlieorie,15/3 (2000), 247-54.
We are all instruments 79
this is why his project was truly an aesthetic inquiry: he sought to
understand music in terms of mediation and experience.
We are all instruments
Timbre - and its immediate and powerful ability to convey a sense of
agitation or calm - was for Herder a proof that a listener, in hearing such
impassioned tones) did not experience a mere «raw" sensation, but s01ne-
thing always already imbued with aesthetic qualities. The very process
of discerning different instruments already meant having an aesthetic
experience. Herder addressed issues of music and its expressive power
that remained intractable problems from within Immanuel Kant's
philosophy. Yet it was not until the publication of Herder's Kalligonein
1800 that his musical aesthetics were articulated publically. Kalligonewasa
response to, and a meta-critique of, Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft( Critique
of Judgment, 1790), tl1e third and final work of his critical project. Herder
occasionally addressed Kant directly, in fiery language:
Youi then, you who despise the music of tones and can gain nothing from it if it
doesn't have words) stay far away from have nothing to do with it! Keep away from
itl Consider it as a play in which "purposive-purposeless" instruments are exer-
dsed! But you) musicians, write above your music hall in the manner of Plato the
words: "No hater of the Muses may enter!" 68
Herder challenged, among other things, tl1e series of binary oppositions
between types of beauty and types of aesthetic judgments t11atformed the
!· :,,,:1
center of Kant's aesthetic proje,t. Kant distinguishes between, among
others, form and presentation; design and color; free beauty and accessory
beauty; reflection and sensation; beauty and agreeableness; culture and
itl
'',,
'
charm. In each dyad, the former contributes to, or is a necessary compon-
ent of, "pure" aesthetic judgments, in which the object is truly beautiful,
while the latter contributes to "material" aesthetic judgments, in which the
object is either merely agreeable, or else is contingently beautiful. Kant
writes:
;:·1'
6a "Habt ihr also, ihr, die ihr die Musik der Tone also solche verachtet, und ihr nichts abgewinnen
konnt, ohne Worte nichts mit ihr; so bleibct ihr fern. Setzet sic als ein Spiel an, worinn sich
'zweckmiiBig-zwecklos'lebendige Instrumcnte Uben. 1hr aber, Tonki.instler,schreibt eurem
Musiksaal nach Art des Plato die Worte vor: 'Kein Muse.nlosergehe hinein!"' Herder, Kalligone
(Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Haitknock, 1800), vol. II, pp. 169-70.
 --~-,·
80 The idea of timbre
There are two kinds of beauty, free beauty (pulchritude vaga) and merely acces-
sory beauty (pulchritude adhaerens). Free beauty does not presuppose a concept
of what the object [is meanl] to be. Accessory beauty does presuppose such a
concept, as well as the object's perfection in terms of that con~ept. The free ki1_1ds
of beauty are called (self-subsistent) beauties of this or that thmg. The other kmd
of beauty is accessory to a concept (i.e., it is conditioned beauty). And as such
[accessory beauty] is attributed to objects that fall under the concept of a
. 1ar purpose. 69
part1cu
Unlike the imitative theories that dominated much of eighteenth-century
aesthetics, Kant's concept of beauty radically breaks away from notions of
representation, eschewing notions of purpose and imitation. Within Kant's
theory, intrinsic purposiveness would only demote the object from a free
beauty to a dependent beauty. Here Kant seems to rescue music from the
criticisms of vagueness made by so many earlier thinkers:
Flowers are free natural beauties. Hardly anyone apart from the botanist knows
what sort of thing a flower is [meant] to be, , . Hence the judgment is based on no
perfection of any kind, no intrinsic purposiveness to which the combination of the
manifold might refer. Many birds (the parrot, the humming-bird) the bird of
paradise) and a lot of crustaceans in the sea are [free] beauties thcmsel~es [and]
belong to no object determined by concepts as to its purpose, but we like them
a
freely and on their own account. Thus designs la grecque,the foliage on ~orders
or on wallpapet\ etc. mean nothing on their own; they represent nothmg) ~o
object under a determinate concept, and are free beauties. What we call fantasias
in music (namely, music without a topic [Thema]), indeed all music not set to
words, may also be included in the same class.
70
A pure judgment of taste, it follows, occurs when an object is judged
according to its form alone, ignoring any purpose or function. An ancient
cooking utensil, for instance, can still be considered as a work of art: we
may make judgments about its form, its shape and proportions, ignoring
any function or the object's suitability for accomplishing this function.
The application of Kant's formal theory to music would appear straight-
forward: instrumental music, like birds and wallpaper designs, would be
judged according to its "outward form." For the nineteenth-century the-
orists who followed Kant, music's form was the way in which the composer
has organized the sounds into an overarching structure. Kant, however, had
no comparable notion of musical form, and never discusses music in terms
of melody and harmony, but rather as a "play of sensations:'
6g I. Kant, Critiqueof Judgment,trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987),P· 76.
70
Ibid., pp. 76-77,
We are all instruments 81
When we unpack Kant's notion of musical sensation, his dean divisions
between ldnds of aesthetic judgments and kinds of beauty begin to disinte-
grate. Musical sensation - tone - and color continually waver between the
aesthetic categories of the "beautiful" and the merely "agreeable." Here Kant
calls upon the familiar delineation between color and design. In Kant's view,
design, because it has form, is the source of an object's beauty. Color and
tone (by analogy), because they belong to the "presentation" of the object,
are merely agreeable: one can speak of the "charm" of a color or tone, but
not of their beauty. Yet Kant continually hints at the possibility that a color
or tone could be beautiful in and of itself. He writes, for example:
Most people will declare a mere color, such as the green color of a lawn, or a mere
tone (as distinct from sound and noise), as for example that of a violin, to be
beautiful in themselves, even though botli seem to be based merely on the matter
of presentations, i.e., solely on sensations, and hence deserve only to be called
agreeable. And yet it will surely be noticed at the same time that sensations of
color as well as of tone claim to deserve being considered beautiful only insofar as
they are pure,And that is an attribute that already concerns form. 71
,I
Kant suggests here that this property of purity can be judged only by I
. !!I
knowledge of the form of the vibrations of air or light that constitute the
tone or color. This concept of pure color or tone is bracketed as a theoretical
possibility rather than a working component of his aesthetics. He then
proceeds to downplay the importm1ce of such raw materials by arguing
that they fill a subsidiary role in aesthetic judgments, and cannot make an
object beautiful. They can be added to the object, but "all they do is to make
the form intuitable more precisely, determinately, and completely, while
they also enliven the presentation by means of their charm, by arousing and
sustaining the attention we direct towards the object itself."72
Later, when discussing the divisions of the fine arts, Kant revisits the
aesthetic status of color and tone, and again entertains the possibility
that the very act of sensing already implies a ldnd of formal reflection.
He writes:
we cannot say with certainty whether a color or a tone (sound) is merely an
agreeable sensation or whether it is of itself already a beautiful play of [compon-
ent] sensations and as s1,1chcarries with it, as we judge it aesthetically, a liking for
its form. Just consider the rapidity of the vibration of light, or in the case of tones,
of the air, which probably far exceedsall our ability to judge directlyin perception
the ratio in the temporal division [produced] by these vibrations. 73
71 72 73
Ibid., p. 70. Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., p. 194.

82 The idea of timbre
If we can judge the "temporal division" of the vibrations - that is, the
form of the vibration - then these sensations can be beautiful in and of
themselves. If we merely sense the effect of the vibrations, then we never
connect colors and tones with anything more than agreeableness. Though
direct perception of the vibration's form seems impossible, Kant reminds
us that people can be, in spite of keen vision or hearing, color-blind or
tone-deaf, in which case they lack an innate ability to judge the sensation's
"temporal division." In turn this implies that we are usually able to judge
the form of the vibration of a tone or color, a fact that has important
ramifications for music as an art:
If we consider all of this, we may feel compelled to regard sensation of color and tone
not as mere sense impressions,but as the effect of our judgingof theform we find in
the play of many sensations. However, the difference that one or the other opinion
wouldmake to our judgingof the basisof music would affectthe definitiononly in
this: we would declaremusic either,as we did above,to be the beautiful[schon]play
of sensations(of hearing),or [to be the play]of agreeablesensations.Onlyunder the
first kind of explicationwill music be presentedwholly as fine [sch/in]art, while
under the second it would be presented (at least in part) as agreeableart. 74
Music is thus pushed to the threshold between beauty and agreeable-
ness. While Kant's ambivalence over the status of musical sensation
ultimately seems of little consequence to the aesthetic project of the Kritik
der Urteilskraft, it is one reason for Kant's difficulties with music
altogether. Because he sees music fundamentally as a "play of sensations"
and does not discuss other aspects of musical form, he forces music to
assume the same fate as its constituent parts, and therefore to waver
between the categories of the agreeable and the beautiful. Music can
stimulate the mind, but because it is fundamentally sensation, it can never
fuel cognition. However, Kant did rank music highly on account of its
"charm and mental agitation ... though [music] speaks through nothing
but sensations without concepts, so that unlike poetry it leaves us with
nothing to meditate about, it nevertheless does agitate the mind more
diversely and intensely, even if merely temporarily." 75 In the end, when he
77
judges the arts according to "the culture they s4pply to the mind;' Kant
was obliged to demote music to "the lowest place among the fine arts;'
awarding highest rank to painting and sculpture. 76
Yet there is something quite remarkable in Kant's discussion of tone and
its perception: his attention to the "form of vibration" was precisely what
78
74
Ibid,, p. 194 75 76
Ibid., p, 198. Ibid., p. 200,
~~------- --- "--"----~---·-•y
We are all instruments 83
Helmholtz investigated nearly a century later when he sought to under-
stand ti1:1bre;like _Herder, Kant also turned to timbre, although perhaps
unknowmgly. But 1twas Kant's dismissal of music that galvanized Herder's
return to musical aesthetics, leading to the publication of Kalligone.
As a whole, Ka/ligonealternates between describing Herder's own aes-
thetic theory - which often takes the foi·m of dialogs between three
characters - and attacking Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft.Though Ka/ligone
addresses the arts in general, the project is centered on rescuing music
from Kant's low ranking. The importance of this work has been under-
1
played in most accounts of Herder's oeuvre as well as in musical
aesthetics." Though this text marked an explicit return to mt1sicalaesthet-
ics, it would be.wrong to suggest that Herder's thoughts on the topic had
not developed smce the ViertesWi:ildchen, or that no other part of his oeuvre
sheds any light on his conception of the relationship between listener and
music. Music and the importance of sensation infiltrate Herder's philoso-
phy as a who!~. Indeed, Herder's theory of the inseparability of cognition
and sensation is most strongly articulated with respect to music.
For example, in Herder's essay "Vom Erkennen und Empfinden den
z:,vo Haupthiiften der menschlichen Seele" ("On Cognition and Sensa-
lion, the Two Main Forces in the Human Soul", 1775), he continues the
arguments laid out in the ViertesWaldchen.He complains that contempor-
ary metaphysics, most directly referring to Kant, among others, was too
far removed from lived experience: "what a dead, wooden clock the soul
and the science of the soul has now become. In all the mutual perceptions
of thought and sensation it lacks deep derivation fruitfulness and
truth ·" 78 Th e 1'd ea th at one could discuss the mind ' and cognition ' in
~bstract t~rms, apart from feeling and sensation, was a philosophical
nnposs1bility for Herder: sensation and cognition are one and the same:
Is the whole mountain of our cognition supposed to be accumulated without I
feeling?ls the most godlikeforce of our soul supposed to build with less reward
RbO e~t N orton argues that 1t
·· 1snot connected to Herder's earlier thought, and accordingly does
not -~1scussthe.work in his study on Herder's aesthetics, John Neubauer briefly mentions
Kalltgonebut, like Norton, sees little connection between it and Herder's earlier writing
th . . 00
aes etics, Instead expressing dismay that Herder never finished the project of a musical
mon_adologythat he outlines in the Viertes Wi.:ildchen.See J. Neubauer, The Emancipationof
Music[~om~anguage:Departurefrom Mimesis in Eighteenth-CenturyAesthetics(New Haven:
Yale Umverstty Press, 1986), p. 160.
Herd~r'. "Yorn Erkennen und Empfinden den zwo Hauptkraften der menschlichen Seele" ("On
Co~~1t1on and Sensation, the Two Main Forces of the Human Soul:' 1775), in Philoso hical
W1'ttings,p. 182. p
 84 The idea of timbre
than a bee, and to fly the goal of cognition like a shot arrow, like a ray of light,
quicldy and also just as without feeling? No! In cognition there lives sensation, the
deepest, most spiritual, godlike sensation! Error and ignorance are night and fog;
truth is brightness and sun, bound up with the feeling, "This is the right place to
bel," as on the mountain of the 'fransfiguration. The quickest judgment of the soul
is affirmation or denial, i.e. in cruder terms) only expression of good or bad, of
harmony or discord, of pain or pleasurc. 79
The lively inseparability of sensation and cognition governs our deep
response to music. But for Herder, we do not simply respond to music, we
are ourselves a kind of musical instrument, one capable of responding to a
variety of sensory input. Kant, with his emphasis on enduring concepts,
seems to conceive of the mind as a library capable of preservation; for
Herder, the mind is an instrument, designed to respond dynamically to a
i! variety of sensations. Throughout his writing, Herder refers to hnman
nature as "string-play," tuned and played upon by outside forces. Indeed,
this is why mnsic is so important for Herder, for it "plays on the clavi-
chord within us which is our own innermost being." In other words, we
respond to music because we are always alreadymusical.80 The human-as-
instrument metaphor was of course centuries old, but in Herder that
metaphor is vital. The "clavichord within us" is not merely a way of
describing an abstract structure, but a way of being in and reacting to
the world around us.
In discussing cognition and sensation, Herder frequently invokes the
metaphor of a string instrument to explain how humans respond to
sensory input. He writes:
Contradictions in the human being, apparent enemies, to what extent do you
mutually support each other?Where do you eliminateeach other? I-lowdo you
relate to the happiness of each human being and of all human beings? You great
7
" Sollte der ganze Berg unseres Erkennens ohne Gefuhl zusammengetragen seyn? Sollte die
Gottfihnlichte Kraft unser Seele,unbelohnter als eine Beine bauen und zum Ziel <las
Erkennens, wie ein geschoi3nerFfeil, wie ein Lichtsral, schnell und eben auch so Geflihllos
fliegen?Nein! Im Erkennen wohnt Empfindung, die innigste, geistigste, Gott8hnliche
Empfindung! Inthum und Unwi:Benheitist Nacht und Nebel: Wahr)leit ist Glanz und Sonne,
mit dem GefllhI, "Hier ist gut seyn!" verbunden, wie auf dem Berge der Verklanmg. Das
schnellste Urtheil der Seele ist Bejahung oder Verneinung, d, e, mit grObern Ausdrticken, nur
AuBerung des Guten oder Uebcls, der Einstimmung oder des Misklanges,des Schmerzes oder
VergnUgens."Ibid., p. 179,
80
There is a powerful connection between Herder's theory oflanguage aod his idea of humans as
being "already" musical. See C. Taylor, PhilosophicalArguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995), pp. 79-99,
The little clavichords in our souls 85
string~play of all manners of thought and sensation, human nature, who tuned
you? V\!ho strung you? Who plays on you? Who listens to you?81
In a later version of the same essay, he writes: ((The extent to which we
participate in what surrounds us, how deeply love and hate, disgust and
revulsion, vexation and pleasure, plant their roots in ns - this tunes the
string-play of our thoughts, this makes us into the human beings we
82
are." In shunning the abstract, Herder created a philosophical framework
in which individual sensations could be appreciated for their own value.
Indeed, Herder, because of his holistic approach, believed that regard for
the individual was precisely what was lost in philosophical generalizing.
He writes: "Metaphysics reveals the unity in everything splendidly, but
does it also reveal as distinguishingly the eachness in each thing?"83 And
later: "Natural science was unable to arrive at forces as long as people
failed to regard each individual thing as what it is, as unique, as long as
they always only imputed to it what it could be or should be in general:' 84
When Herder returned to music in Kalligone,he was able to draw upon
these ideas, which he had developed in the thirty years after the Viertes
Wiildchen.Indeed, rather than representing a breal<from his early aesthetic
thinking, Herder's Kalligonereinforced his theory of sensation, not by
producing an aesthetics of single tones, but by developing further the
theory of how humans respond to musical sensation.
The little clavichords in our souls
Herder's metaphor of the string-play of our minds gained new significance
in Kalligone.It had served as a useful way of explaining how humans
responded dynamically to a variety of sensory input; in the context of
musical aesthetics, however, the metaphor suggested a natural affinity
between musical sensation and the human mind. Indeed, throughout
Kalligone,musical sensation seems to accrue increasing power and signifi-
cance. In chapter 3, several of his characters discuss how tones communi-
cate to human listeners:
81
Herder, "Vom Erkennen und Empfinden den zwo Hauptkriiften der menschlichen Socle"
(1775), in PhilosophicalWritings,p. 184.
82
Herder, "Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seelc" ("On the Cognition and
Sensation of the Human Soul," 1778), in PhilosophicalWritings,p. 196.
83
Herder, "Vom Erkennen un<lEmpfinden den zwo Hauptkriiften der menschlkhen Seele"
(1775), in PhilosophicalWritings,p. 180.
84
Ibid., p. 181.
86 The idea of timbre
A: A blow disturbs a body; what docs that sound say?
n: "I have been disturbed; thus my parts are vibrating and coming together again."
A: Do they also say this to us?
B: Through and through) we are resilh;nt beings; our em\ the hearing-chamber of
the soul, is an auditorium [Akroaterion],an echo-chamber of the finest kind.
A: So if single tones arouseus, what do intermittent tones do?
n: They renew and amplify the vibration, like a tuba; they reawaken,
A: And long, continuoustones?
n: They extend the emotion by prolonging the vibration. They create an incredibly
powerful effect.
A: And tones that get louderor softer)riseor fall, that are sloweror fastet; more
serious'or lightet;that are increasinglyor decreasinglyintense,harsh or soft,
regularor lrregulatjthat is, shocks, blows) breaths, waves, emotion ~nd
pleasure - what effoct do all these have on us?
B: Similar responses, as every involuntary reaction of our emotions to music. TI1e
passion within us rises and falls, it leaps or slips and falls away slowly. Now
they are more agitated, now they retreat; now they are weaker and now
stronger. The movement and the way they move varies with each
Modulation, with each striking accent, with each change of key. Music plays
on the clavichord within us, which is our innermost nature. 85
Later in Kalligone, when Herder addresses Kant's evaluation of music
directly, he takes up the same argument about the nature of tone versus
that of color. While Kant treated the sensation of color and tone as similar
problems (recall that he entertained the possibility that the act of sensing a
color might imply a ldnd of formal judgment), Herder scoffs at the
possibility that the two types of sensation could be discussed together:
85
''A, Ein Stols erschiittert den KOrper; was sagt sein Schall? B. "Ich bin e~·schiittert; so vibriren
meine Theile und stellen sich wieder her," A. Sagen sie dies auch uns? B. Durch und <lurch sind
wir elastische Wesen; miser Ohr, die GehOrkammer unsrer Seele ist ein Akroaterion, eine
Echokammer der feinsten Art. A. Wenn also ein einzelner Ton aufweckt,was tlmn abgesetzte
cinzelne Tone? B. Sie erncuen und verstarken die Erschiitterung; sic wecken, wie eine Tuba,
wiederholt auf. A. Und langgezogene, anhaltendeTOne?B. Sie dehnen die Empfindung, indem
die Erschiitterung anhiilt. Sie wirken ungemein machtig. A. Und wachsendeoder abnehmende,
steigendeoder sinkendeTOne, ein langsameroder sclmeller,ernsthafteroder hiipfender,
andringender,7uri/ckweichender, hart- oder weicher,gleich-oder -ungleichmiissiger Fortgangder
Tone, d. i. der St6Be, Schlage, Hauche, Wellen, der RUhrungen und VergnUgen, was wirken sie
auf unser GemLlth?B. Gleichartige Regungen, wie jeder die Musik begleitende unwillkUhrliche
Ausdruck u11SrerAffekten zeigt. Das leidenschaftliche in uns (w 01Jµtxov) hebet skh und
sinkt, es hti.pft oder schleicht und schreitet langsam, Jetzt wird es andringend-, jetzt
zurilckweichend-, jetzt schwacher-, Jetzt starker gerilhrt; seine eigne Bewegung, sein Tritt
veritndert sich mit jeder Modulation, mit jedem treffenden Accent, geschweige mit einer
verii.nderten Tona1i, Die Musik spielt in uns ein Clavichord, das unsre eigne innigste Naturist."
Herder, Kalligone,vol. I, pp, 115-17.
Conclusion 87
"the art of tone and the art of color [are] fully equated; as though colors
withoctt drawing can be set equal to tones as a medium of art." 86 Tones,
unlike colors, are imbued with a kind of ((significative power" that reveals
both the nature of the instrument giving forth the tone and the consti-
tution of the listener who hears that tone:
In the whole of nature, all elastic bodies upon being struck or stroked make known
(audibly or less audibly to us) their interior,that is, their excited and restorative
forces.This we call noise[Schall),and more finelyexcited, sound[Klang);sound,
which sets every similarly organized object into same vibration, and in sensitive
beings brings about an analogous sensation. 87
Herder's philosophy did not seek to elevate instrumental music above
vocal inusic; in turning to timbre and to conceptualizing the human
listene1· as a kind of instrument he elevated instruments - and the role
they play in mediating and modulating sound - within philosophical
discourse. Of course, Herder was not the first thinker to equate human
beings to instruments: the metaphor of the human being as a string
instrument goes back to antiquity. Bnt what is strildng about Herder's
use of tl1e metaphor was the differentiation between each listener. We are
each a different kind of instrument; our disposition determines the par-
ticular way in which we respond to the sensations that we take in from the
world around us. Humanity, for Herder, was a kind of vast and diverse
instrumental ensemble.
Conclusion
When Herder called for a musical monadology - when he demanded tl1at
philosophers understand musical sound as it was experienced by listeners -
he did more than show tl1e inextricability of timbre and aesthetic discourse.
Herder reveals that timbre is the human experience of sound: it is the
concept to which we must turn to describe the immediacies of how sounds
strike our ears, how tl1eyaffect us. It is the word we need when we want to
86
"VoUCnds}"'arben- und Ton~;Ton-, und Farbenkunstzusammengestellt; als ob Farben ohne
Zeichnung sich als Medien der Kunst Tc\nen gleichstellen lieBen." Ibid.1 vol. II, pp. 150-51.
87
"In der gesammten Natur alle elastischen KOrper auf einen StoB oder Strich (uns horbar
oder minder hOrbar) ihr Inneres,d. i. ihre errcgten und skh wieder herstellenden Krafte zu
erkennengeben.Dies nennen wir Schall,und feiner erregt, Klang,Klang, der jede iihnliche
Orgartisation in gleiche Schwingung versetzt, und bei empfindenden Wesen eine analoge
Empflndung wirket." Ibid., vol. II, pp. 151-52.
 88 The idea of timbre
Conclusion 89

discuss sound in terms of its particularities and peculiarities. To put it

For Carl DahJhaus, this is a typical attempt to express the inexpressible
another way>to talk about timbre is to value sound as sound, and not as
in music: {(it is just the arbitrariness;' he concludes, uthe unbounded
a sonic manifestation of abstract principles. The new discourse about timbre
imagination with which Tieck wounds prosaic logic, that tnrns this exe-
and instruments in the eighteenth century did not correspondor coincide
gesis into a poetic text, that lets the reader imagine what is granted the
with the birth of the aesthetic; this discourse was the birth of the aesthetic.
hearer of absolute music: an experience that overcomes him for an instant,
The construction of 1nusicalaesthetics meant attending to music's im1nedi- 90
but which cannot be held fast." Dahlhaus largely treats the content of·
ate sensations and its mediating technologies, its instruments. This is what it
Tieck's prose poem as predetermined romantic rhetoric; for Dahlhaus, it
means to talk about instrumental sonority, and it was precisely that atten-
differs from other early romantic poetic attempts to write about music
tion that gave rise to a new language about musical tones.
only in surface detail. But essential to the thinking of Tieck and his
Attention to the "eachness1' of musical sounds undergirds romantic
contemporaries is the assumption that the sensual experience of music
aesthetics. Within the ardent praise of music by early romantics, for
was something not only aesthetic, but also potentially profouncl1y moving.
example, is the assumption that musical sound is inherently beautiful.
Indeed, what Tieck expresses so viscerally in the passage above is music's
While Herder argued that tones should be distinguished as a medium by
ability, through its powerful medium of tones, to affect the mind and soul.
the power they exert over a listener, Wilhelm Wackenroder used the
Talk of how "luster shines upon luster" and the sparlding play of color
metaphor of the Virgin birth to explain the natural expressivity of the
speak to the receptiveness of human listeners to the rich experience of
musical medium. He argued that "no other art has a raw material which is, musical sound.
in and of itself, already impregnated with such divine spirit. Its vibrating
If timbre thwarts systematic analysis, if it refuses to be disciplined, it is
material with its ordered wealth of chords comes to meet the creating
precisely because timbre stands at the inauguration of modern musical
hands halfway and expresses beautiful emotions." 88 Ludwig Tieck, his
discourse. It cannot be easily analyzed as a parameter because ultimately
friend and collaborator, heard in sound an entire synesthetic experience:
timbre is not a parameter at all: it is aesthetic attention itself. The birth of
But what words should I resort to, should I grasp, in order to express the power of the attention to timbre is also a condition of possibility for orchestration,
I that heavenly music, with its full tones) its charming reminiscences, has over our for - as we will see in the next two chapters - orches/ration is the art of
heart? With its ai1gelicpresence, it enters the soul immediately and breathes manipulating instrumental timbre. To explore this snbject, we shall move
heavenly breath. Oh, how all memories of all bliss fall and flow back into that out of the realm of aesthetic philosophy and into the world of the
one moment, how all noble feelings, all great emotions welcome the guest! Like composer who was powerfully and intimately associated with the art of
magical seeds, how rapidly the sounds take root within us, and now there's a orchestration in the eighteenth century: Joseph Haydn.
rushing of invisible, fiery forces, and in an instant a grove is rustling with a
thousand wonderful flowers, with incomprehensibly rare colors, and our childhood
and an even more distant past are playing and jesting in the leaves and among one in uns Wurzeln, und mm treibt's und drangt's mit unsichtbaren Fenerkraften, und im
another, color gleams upon color, luster shines upon luster, and all the light, the Augenblick rauscht ein Hain mit tausend wunderbaren Blumen, mit unbegreiflich seltsamen
Farben empor, unsre Kindheit und eine noch fri.ihere Vergangenheit spielen und scherzen auf
sparkling, the rain of beams, coaxes out new luster and new beams of light.89
den Bliittern und in den Wipfeln, Da werden die Blumen el'l'egt und schreiten <lurch einander,
I
I
Farbe fonkelt an Farbe, Glanz erglanzt auf Glanz, und all' <las Licht, der Funkelschein, der
. I' 88 Strahlenregen lockt neuen Glanz und neue Strahlen hervor," L. Tieck, "Unmusikalische
W. I-I. Wackenroder, "Das eigenti.'lmlicheinnere Wesen der Tonkunst," in WilhelmHeinrich Toleranz," in W. H. Wackenroder, Werkeund Briefe (Heidelberg: L. Schneider, 1967),
I
'
Wackemoder:Werkeund Briefe(Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1984), p. 220; WilhelmHeinrich pp. 249-58, 236, quoted in C. Dahlhaus, The Idea of AbsoluteMusic, tnms. R, Lustig
Wackenroder's Confessionsand Fantasies,trans, M. H, Schubert (University Park: Pennsylvania (University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 68-69.
90
State University Press, 1971), p. 189. Dahlhaus, The Idea of AbsoluteMusic, p. 69,
89
"Welcb,e Worte aber soll ich fassen und ergreifen, um die Kraft Kund zu machen, die die
himmlische Musik mit ihren vollen Tonen, mit ihren liebreizenden Anklangen Uber unser Herz
erzeigt? Sie tritt unmittelbar mit ihrer Engelsgegenwart in die Seele, und haucht himmlischen
Odem aus, 0, wie stlirzen, wie flieBen im Augenblick alle Erinnenmgen aller Seligkeiten in
den einen Moment zurikk, wie brelten sich dem Safte alle edlen Gefii.hle, alle groBen
Gesinmmgen entgegen! Wie schnell, gleich zaubcrhaften Samenk6rnern, schlagen die T6ne