Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment

Can an abstract theory of Empfindsamkeit aesthetics have any value to a musician wishing to study composition in the classical style? The eighteenth-century German theorist and pedagogue Heinrich Koch showed how this question could be answered with a resounding yes. Starting with the systematic aesthetic theory of the Swiss encyclopedist Johann Sulzer, Koch was creatively able to adapt Sulzer’s conservative ideas on ethical mimesis and rhetoric to concrete problems of music analysis and composition. In this collaborative study, Thomas Christensen and Nancy Baker have translated and analysed selected writings of Sulzer and Koch respectively, bringing to life a little-known confluence of philosophical and musical thought from the German Enlightenment. Koch’s appropriation of Sulzer’s ideas to the service of music represents an important development in the evolution of Western musical thought.

• The first appearance of these writings in English • Remarkable fusion of music and aesthetics • Valuable insight into the views of the German Enlightenment

Foreword Ian Bent; Part I. Johann Georg Sulzer: General Theory of the Fine Arts (1771–74): Selected Articles; Introduction Thomas Christensen; 1. Aesthetic foundations; 2. The creative process; 3. Musical issues; Part II. Heinrich Christoph Koch: Introductory Essay on Composition, Vol. II (1787); Introduction Nancy Kovaleff Baker; Preface; Introduction; 4. The aim and the inner nature of compositions and, above all, the way in which they arise; Index.