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Schopenhauer and Rossinian Universality On The Italianate in SCH
Schopenhauer and Rossinian Universality On The Italianate in SCH
Schopenhauer and Rossinian Universality On The Italianate in SCH
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Melody’s depths
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 285
in the melody, in the high, singing, principal voice, leading the whole in progressing
with unrestrained freedom . . . I recognize the highest grade of the will’s
objectification . . . melody alone has significant and intentional connexion from
beginning to end . . . [and] relates the most secret history of the intellectually
enlightened will, portrays every agitation, every effort, every movement of the
will, everything which the faculty of reason summarizes under the wide and negative
concept of feeling.14
Just as humanity stood as objectified will’s highest grade, while still con-
nected to (and dependent upon) phenomena of the lower grades, so too did
melody relate to harmony. Though their relation remained hierarchical, the
grades depended upon each other, forming a synthesis corresponding to the
unity of the will. “Melody as an integral part strikes into the harmony as does
the latter into the former. In just the same way, the will is only one in all the
stages of its phenomena, and in the sum-total of these it reveals itself.”15
This evidently goes against the norm of much German Romantic musical
discourse in its relative valuation of harmony and melody.16 Schopenhauer’s
equation of music’s primary force with melody, and his argument for
melody’s capacity to disclose the “depth” of the will, instead helped situate
his writing towards the Italian side of contemporary debates;17 indeed, one
could be more specific: his high “singing” melody, moving “lightly” through
“runs” in “unrestrained freedom,” begins to suggest nothing less than the
stylistic conventions of primo ottocento opera.18
Not all (or even most) melodies possessed authenticity for Schopenhauer.
Rather, “creative genius” could harness melody to create music that
expressed “the kernel of an event.”19 This sort of depth through melody
proved authenticity (just as, tautologically enough, disinterested composi-
tion through “pure contemplation” by a person capable of “complete objec-
tivity” – i.e. a genius – ensured depth).20 And sure enough, the melody
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the four voices . . . bass, tenor, alto, and soprano, or fundamental note, third, fifth,
and octave, correspond to the four grades in the series of existences . . . to the
mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and to man . . . in this rule we recognize the
musical analog of the fundamental disposition of nature . . . organic beings are
much more closely related among themselves than they are to the inanimate,
inorganic mass of the mineral kingdom.24
The bass, in this model, occupied the “inorganic” sphere, and thus remained
most isolated from the higher voices, which became increasingly complex
and individualized. In contrast to the bass’s mineral nature appears the
soprano voice, which “stands out” distinctly
even in the most powerful orchestral accompaniment . . . and thus obtains a natural
right to deliver the melody . . . [I]n this way the soprano becomes the suitable
representative of . . . enhanced sensibility . . . and consequently of the most highly
developed consciousness that stands at the highest stage of the scale of beings.25
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 287
Tancredi, for example, Rossini drew upon a complement of voice types fairly
common to his opere serie, with the role of Tancredi being cast for musico,
alongside the soprano of the heroine, Amenaide. Moreover, the ensembles in a
work like Tancredi often provide just the kind of staggered layering that
Schopenhauer declared analogous to the will’s grades of objectification.
The Largo concertato to Tancredi’s Act I finale (“Gli infelici affetti miei”)
can provide one possible musical exemplification of the process described
by Schopenhauer, as the villain Orbazzano (bass) and the father Argirio
(tenor) come together with Tancredi and Amenaide for their static moment
of reflection. The three men, united in condemnation of Amenaide, sing the
same text in thirds, while Amenaide’s florid prayer to heaven (“Ah, se
giusto, o ciel”) floats above, as she appeals for recognition of her innocence.
Next, Tancredi’s and Amenaide’s voices are left suspended in the air, as the
two lower voices drop out; the procedure is then repeated with tenor and
bass alone, but it is Amenaide’s re-entry that draws most attention, seeming
to rise up out of the depths of the lower registers themselves. When she is
re-joined by the other voices and orchestra for a repeat of the opening
material, she continues to soar over them, ornamenting and elaborating,
once again supported by the individuated yet subordinate voices below.
Schopenhauer’s characterization of music’s grades of objectification, with
its concomitant privileging of ornamented upper ranges and melody, in
short, fits with the sort of opera he loved. The phenomenal world he knew,
with its minerals, plants, animals, and humans, was an embodiment of will. It
could “just as well” be called “embodied music”; or even, perhaps, embodied
Rossini.26
Any conception of the world as “embodied music” clearly rests upon a belief
in the presence of timeless and universal musical values. Characters in opera
express ideas and stories through their singing, however, and such depend-
ence on words, for many Romantic critics, separated the genre from the
realm of the “absolute.” In contrast to the Beethovenian symphony, by this
argument, the words in primo ottocento opera muddied music’s potential
purity. This provides another reason why Schopenhauer’s metaphysics,
with its strong advocacy of the singularity of music, can appear distant
from Italianate stylistic conventions.27 Once again, however, Schopenhauer’s
paeans to musical purity derive in large part from his reflections on Rossini’s
Italian operas.
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Where words and stories lacked precision, in other words, music, as a copy
of the will, could sharply characterize a multitude of emotions, stories, and
meanings.
But this posed no necessary contradiction to Schopenhauer’s admiration for
Rossini. Just as Hegel, in the words of Bernd Sponheuer, made a case
for “Rossini’s operas as the origins of absolute music,” so Schopenhauer
saw the composer’s concentration on melody as an example of music freed
from language.30 Moreover, Michael Zimmermann has suggested that, in
the passage on Beethoven quoted above, Schopenhauer “describes the
Beethovenian symphony as though it were a Rossinian finale.” He focuses on
the idea of “confusion” transforming into “order”: rerum concordia discors.31
The argument that there was a lack of fit between words and music in
Rossini’s operas was a familiar one at the time.32 Some, though, would
choose to turn this into a virtue: at several points in his Vie de Rossini, for
example, Stendhal argues against the importance of text:
Once we have caught two or three words to inform us that the hero is in despair, or
at the height of happiness, it matters very little whether we clearly hear the words of
the rest of the aria . . . the inflection of the words is much more important in music
than the words themselves . . . who pays attention to the words of an opera seria?33
By mocking values that would place textual clarity before melody, Stendhal
often argued that words were more or less redundant. And Schopenhauer, if
anything, went still further: one reason that Rossini’s Italian operas could
give particular pleasure was because of the “sneering contempt” (die
höhende Verachtung) with which Rossini sometimes treated his texts.
Such disregard for words, Schopenhauer affirmed, was “echt musikalisch.”34
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 289
The same kind of reasoning could also justify Rossini’s use of his own
music in new and often highly contrasting dramatic contexts:
Music makes every picture . . . every scene from real life and from the world, at once
appear in enhanced significance . . . it is due to this that we are able to set a poem to
music as a song, or a perceptive presentation as a pantomime, or both as an opera.
Such individual pictures of human life, set to the universal language of music, are
never bound to it or correspond to it with absolute necessity, but stand to it only in
the relation of an example, chosen at random, to a universal concept.35
One can hardly understand how it could have happened, that in the country that
gave birth to the greatest composers . . . all authenticity in art could so completely
disappear! Rossini, admittedly a frivolous composer and therefore not worthy of
true art, has actually stood the principle [of opera] on its head.39
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The very aspects of Rossini’s style that Schopenhauer had found compatible
with the will – the ornamented and overpowering melody, the elevation of
the “purely” musical over dramatic function combining with “genius” to
bestow “authenticity,” are precisely the values against which Hoffmann
rails. Words, characters, plot, and setting all served as pretexts for “strings
of notes, forming successions of flourishes that titillate the ear.”40 Indeed,
the excessive ornamentation, the ingratiating ease by which melody could
captivate and convert, corrupted public taste. Rossini’s music effected
degeneracy in musical taste, fostering a proliferation of musical consumers
“who pursue musical activities without any inner calling . . . merely because
of fashion.”41
Hoffmann expressed opinions on Rossini that were commonplace in
highbrow corners of the specialist German music press.42 Another criticism
involved pitting Rossini’s “melodic” brilliance against his “harmonic”
incompetence. In reference to an 1818 performance of L’inganno felice,
for example, a reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung carped
that “one finds in the arias much melody, but also much bad deportment
in the harmony.”43 A year earlier, a Dresden correspondent had grumbled
that Tancredi needed “more harmonic force and impact.”44
Against this background, Schopenhauer again appears to come closer to
Stendhal than to German critics, for example in Stendhal’s reflections on the
balance between harmony and melody:
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 291
Universality belongs uniquely to music, together with the most precise distinctness,
that gives it that high value as the panacea of all our sorrows. Therefore, if music
tries to stick too closely to the words . . . it is endeavoring to speak a language not its
own. No one has kept so free from this mistake as Rossini; hence his music speaks its
own language so distinctly and purely that it requires no words at all, and therefore
produces its full effect even when rendered by instruments alone.50
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Let us see how the envy of German musicians for a whole generation steadfastly
refused to acknowledge the great Rossini’s merits. At a large choral society dinner I
once witnessed how they sneeringly chanted through the menu to the melody of his
immortal Di Tanti Palpiti. Impotent envy! The melody overpowered and engulfed
the vulgar words.55
Historiographical legacies
It has often been noted that before 1853 Schopenhauer’s writings went
virtually unread.57 The following year Wagner received an enthusiastic
recommendation of WWV from friend and fellow political refugee Georg
Herwegh, and in Wagner’s later writings, he tells how he subsequently
strove to incorporate a Schopenhauerian valorization of music within his
evolving theory of drama.58 As a result, through Wagner, Schopenhauer’s
writings have become indissolubly connected with the theories of the
composer. One of Wagner’s longest discussions of Schopenhauer occurs
in the essay Beethoven (1870), written in honor of Beethoven’s centenary.
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 293
Despite the title, Wagner here paid homage to two heroes, constructing in
the figures of Beethoven and Schopenhauer his ideals of composer and
philosopher. The two figures intertwined, their philosophies, values, even
lifestyles merged as Wagner sought to popularize Schopenhauer in
Beethoven’s image and Beethoven in Schopenhauer’s.
Many of the links between the two men are character traits that
Schopenhauer celebrated as hallmarks of genius – isolation, introversion,
suffering. As K. M. Knittel has argued, “Wagner’s romanticization of
Beethoven’s suffering in general and his deafness in particular transformed
the way critics assess [Beethoven’s] life and works . . . [Wagner] created a new
Beethoven.”59 One might add that he created a new Schopenhauer as well.
Beethoven begins with an exposition of Schopenhauerian philosophy.
“Musical conception . . . can only have its origin on that side of conscious-
ness which Schopenhauer designates as introverted . . . the capacity of
the intellect to apprehend the true Character of things is alone explicable
from this introverted side of consciousness.”60 Both Beethoven and
Schopenhauer lived the introverted ideal. Denying the world, they devoted
themselves in Wagner’s terms to contemplation – philosophical, aesthetic,
musical. And this meant suffering:
The impulses of [Beethoven’s] Will were too strong to find the slightest satisfaction
in . . . light motley pursuits. If his inclination to solitude was nourished hereby, that
inclination, again, coincided with the independence he was destined for . . . which filled
Schopenhauer with that constant anxiety to keep his little inheritance intact and
determined his entire outer life, and which indeed accounts for apparently inexplicable
traits of his character – i.e., the discernment that the veracity of all philosophical
investigations is seriously endangered when there is any need of earning money by
scientific labor: that fostered Beethoven’s defiance of the world, his liking for solitude.62
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Beneath the jeweled and embroidered trappings [Rossini] disclosed the true life-
giver . . . and that was – Melody . . . the naked, ear-delighting, absolute melodic
Melody; i.e., melody that was just Melody and nothing else; that glides into the ear –
one knows not why; that one picks up – one knows not why . . . that sounds sad
when we are merry, and merry when we are out of sorts; and that still we hum to
ourselves – we haven’t a ghost of knowledge why . . . the whole world hurrahed
Rossini for his melodies.64
Schopenhauer had little patience with the scholarly castes, separated himself from
them, strove to be independent of state and society . . . [he] was a total solitary . . .
only natures of iron, such as Beethoven, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Wagner are able
to stand firm . . . from time to time . . . they emerge from their cave wearing a
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 295
terrifying aspect; their words and deeds are then explosions . . . This was the
dangerous way in which Schopenhauer lived . . . yet there will always be demi-gods
who can endure to live, and live victoriously, under such terrible conditions;
and if you want to hear their lonely song, listen to the music of Beethoven.73
Yet the similarities Magee describes stem from a distinctly Wagnerian view
of both Beethoven and Schopenhauer. It was largely Wagner who estab-
lished an association between the two men, who helped to create
Schopenhauer’s immense late-nineteenth-century fame, and who crafted
Beethoven into an artist who revealed immortal truth through his suffering.
Magee’s reading, however creative, is a testimony to Wagner’s enduring
historiographical legacy.
To be sure, parallels between Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music and
Beethoven’s instrumental works and outlook can be compelling. Yet such
readings present only one side of the opposition that Schopenhauer cri-
tiqued and sought to erase. It was never an “either/or” but a “both/and” that
he articulated in his metaphysics of music, a sentiment that suffused his
manuscripts, that his added references to Rossini make clear, and that he
expressed through contempt for German critics’ alleged envy of Rossinian
melody. It would be no exaggeration to claim that Schopenhauer’s metaphy-
sics of music thus offers an alternative vision of early-nineteenth-century
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European music history – one free of the oppositions that Wagner’s relent-
less output of polemic and self-justification did so much to propagate.
Indeed, having disentangled Schopenhauer from his Wagnerian and post-
Wagnerian appropriations, we can begin to rethink the importance of
Rossini to early-nineteenth-century German philosophy – and, more
broadly, to reconsider the various ways in which non-German musical
traditions were crucial in the development of the ideologies of German
Romanticism.
Notes
1 “Sagen Sie Ihrem Freunde Wagner in meinem Namen Dank für die Zusendung
seiner Nibelungen, allein er solle die Musik an den Nagel hängen, er hat mehr Genie
zum Dichter! Ich, Schopenhauer, bleibe Rossini und Mozart treu!” This conversa-
tion, from 1855, was reported by Franz Arnold Wille; see Arthur Schopenhauer,
Gespräche, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1971), 200–201.
2 Among the earliest to characterize Schopenhauer’s fondness for Rossini as curious
was Cosima Wagner. Prompted by Richard’s ridicule of the references to Rossini
added to the first volume of the 1859 edition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,
she referred to Schopenhauer’s “quaint worship” (drolligen Kultus) of the com-
poser. See the entry for March 8, 1872 in Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher, vol. i:
(1869–1872), ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (Munich: Piper, 1988),
498. Klaus Kropfinger discusses this diary entry in Wagner and Beethoven: Richard
Wagner’s Reception of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 130.
3 “Schopenhauers musikalisches Ideal war Rossini. ‘Ich bewundere und liebe
Mozart und besuche alle Konzerte, in denen Beethovensche Symphonien gespielt
werden, aber – wenn man viel Rossini gehört hat, kommt einem alles andere
dagegen schwerfällig vor.’ Wenn er von Rossini sprach, schlug er die Augen
andächtig zum Himmel auf.” See Schopenhauer, Gespräche, 220. Robert von
Hornstein made yearly visits to Frankfurt between 1855 and 1860, and during
these stays he would frequently have dinner with Schopenhauer.
4 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. i, trans.
E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969), 110, 257, and 256. (Henceforth WWV I
and WWV II. All my translations of The World as Will and Representation are
taken from this English edition.)
5 Holly Watkins, “From the Mine to the Shrine: The Critical Origins of Musical
Depth,” 19th-Century Music, 27/3 (2004), 179–207.
6 Notable exceptions include Werner Keil, “‘Gebt mir Rossinische Musik, die da
spricht ohne Worte!’ – Parallelen in Schopenhauers und Hegels Musikanschauung,”
Augsburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 7 (1990), 87–116; Waltraud Roth,
“Schopenhauers Metaphysik der Musik und sein musikalischer Geschmack: Ihre
Entwicklung und ihr wechselseitiges Verhältnis” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 297
Mainz, 1951), esp. 103–106; Mario Ruggenini, “La musica e le parole: Smarrimenti
filosofici in ascolto di Rossini” in La recezione di Rossini ieri e oggi (Rome:
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1994), 55–67; and Michael Zimmermann,
“Rerum concordia discors: Musik und Drama bei Rossini, Schopenhauer und
Richard Wagner,” Musica, 37 (1983), 23–28.
7 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung was first published in late 1818 by the Leipzig
publisher Brockhaus (though the first edition erroneously gives 1819 as the
publication year). In 1844, a second, two-volume edition appeared; volume
one was an edited version of the 1818 book while volume two was largely
devoted to expanding and clarifying ideas presented in volume one. A third
edition was published in 1859 with more emendations. Between the publication
of this edition and Schopenhauer’s death in 1860, he made further, handwritten
changes to both volumes, which were subsequently published in the Fassung
letzter Hand, ed. Julius Frauenstädt (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1873–1874). Payne’s
standard English edition incorporates all of Schopenhauer’s known additions
(the first volume of this edition, therefore, contains much that was not published
in 1818). Where relevant, I will note the date of the first publication of the
passages that I quote.
8 See Arthur Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains in Four Volumes, vol. i: Early
Manuscripts (1804–1818), ed. Arthur Hübscher, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1988). Roth asserts that Schopenhauer’s very first written
notes on a connection between the structure of the world and music date from
1812. See Roth, “Schopenhauers Metaphysik der Musik,” 10–11.
9 Roth speculates that Schopenhauer’s aesthetic predilections would have been
shaped by the Italianate repertoire at the Dresden opera from 1814–1817.
Schopenhauer would have had the opportunity to hear works such as Il turco
in Italia (Dresden performances in 1816), Tancredi (1817), L’inganno felice
(1818), and Elisabetta (1818). See Roth, “Schopenhauers Metaphysik der
Musik,” 50.
10 WWV I, 110.
11 Ibid., 169, 171.
12 Ibid., 256–257.
13 Keil, “Gebt mir Rossinische Musik,” 96–99.
14 WWV I, 258–259 (from 1818) (Schopenhauer’s italics).
15 Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains, vol. i, 284.
16 For a discussion of the connotations of “harmony” and “melody” in contempo-
rary German music-critical discourse, see Bernd Sponheuer, Musik als Kunst
und Nicht-Kunst: Untersuchungen zur Dichotomie von “hoher” und “niederer”
Musik in musikästhetischen Denken zwischen Kant und Hanslick (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1987), 9–35. Along with the creation of the melody-harmony
dichotomy came a simultaneous attempt to create a new kind of melody that
could be heard as distinctly German. Critical discourse on Weber’s Euryanthe
and Der Freischütz, for example, distinguished the characteristics of German
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 299
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300 yael braunschweig
words” (“Die Musik ist viel mächtiger als das Wort. Musik und Worte sind die
Vermählung eines Prinzen mit einem Bettlermädchen. Die Fabel in der Oper ist
Nebensache, im Grunde nur dazu vorhanden, um der Vernunft auch was zu
geben. Rossini hat dies ins Extrem getrieben und die Worte geradezu
verhöhnt”). See Schopenhauer, Gespräche, 221–222.
35 WWV I, 263 (from 1818).
36 Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (University of
Chicago Press, 1989), 37.
37 Schopenhauer, Der handschriftliche Nachlaß, vol. iii: Berliner Manuskripte
(1818–1830), ed. Arthur Hübscher (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1985),
42. The epithet “fremde Zuthat” is found in Schopenhauer’s Reisebuch and was
written down between 1820 and 1822. See also the translation in Schopenhauer,
Manuscript Remains, vol. iii: Berlin Manuscripts (1818–1830), ed. Arthur
Hübscher, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Berg, 1989), 47.
38 Spontini’s own reception in Berlin is complicated; born in Italy and a citizen of
France, Spontini was criticized by those who wanted to promote German opera
in Berlin. Indeed, Count von Brühl, the manager of the opera, had originally
sought to hire Carl Maria von Weber, but the proposal proved too controversial.
Though eventually a strong supporter of Spontini, Hoffmann had written a
condemnatory review of him in 1815 that remained influential in the 1820s. See
Sanna Pederson, “A. B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National
Identity,” 19th-Century Music, 18/2 (1994), 94–96.
39 E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Further Observations on Spontini’s Opera Olimpia” in
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer,
Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 441.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 442. In The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, Hoffmann poked fun at
the ubiquity of “Di tanti palpiti”: “with rare fluency, uncommon expressiveness
and the utmost elegance, Kitty was now singing the famous aria Di tanti palpiti,
etc., etc. She rose magnificently from the heroic vigor of the recitative to the truly
feline sweetness of the andante. The aria might have been written for her, so that
my heart too overflowed, and I broke into a loud howl of joy. Ah, how Kitty
would surely delight a whole world of sensitive tomcat souls with that aria!”
E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea
Bell (New York: Penguin, 1999), 152.
42 Rossini’s operas began to be performed in German-speaking lands in 1816,
though the first Berlin performance of a work by Rossini (Tancredi) did not
occur until 1818. By this time the work had already been performed in Munich
(seven times in 1816, as an exasperated critic observed in the AMZ), Vienna, and
Dresden: see AMZ, 18 (1816), cols. 857–858.
43 Report from Dresden: “genug, man findet im Gesange viel Melodie, aber auch
viel schlechte Haltung in der Harmonie.” AMZ, 20 (1818), col. 133.
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 301
44 Report from Dresden: “folglich, brauchen sie weniger Instrumente: dafür aber
bringen Sie mehr Einfachheit, Gesang und Haltung hinein, wenn Sie in der
Harmonie mehr Wirkung hervorbringen.” AMZ, 19 (1817), col. 330. A similar
1817 evaluation came from a Viennese correspondent: “Rossini’s Musik . . . trägt
den Stempel der Flüchtigkeit, und bietet nicht wenige Verstösse gegen die
Harmonie und die Regeln des reinen Satzes dar” (“Rossini’s music bears the
stamp of hastiness, and presents more than a few transgressions against the rules
of strict composition”); AMZ, 19 (1817), col. 61.
45 Stendhal, Vie de Rossini, 160.
46 For Stendhal, Tancredi possessed an ideal simplicity he famously referred to as
the opera’s “candeur virginale.” Yet the balance between melody and harmony
achieved in Tancredi would come to be lost in later works, Stendhal asserted, as
Rossini’s music became dominated by harmony; on this trajectory, see Benjamin
Walton, “1824. Deciphering Hyperbole: Stendhal’s Vie de Rossini” in Walton,
Rossini in Restoration Paris: The Sound of Modern Life (Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 24–67.
47 Stendhal, Vie de Rossini, 161 (italics in original).
48 WWV I, 113.
49 Keil, “Gebt mir Rossinische Musik,” 107–108.
50 WWV I, 262 (from 1859). This passage is similar to one from WWV II first
published in 1844 without reference to Rossini (see WWV II, 448–449), though
perhaps Schopenhauer already had Rossini in mind.
51 Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. ii, 430–431.
52 See Keil, “Gebt mir Rossinische Musik,” 104 n. 68; Keil also points out, however,
that praise for Rossini had appeared in Schopenhauer’s manuscripts from the
early 1820s, around the same time that references to Beethoven also emerge.
53 The widely circulated comment that Schopenhauer believed Wagner to be a better
writer than composer was evidently meant ironically. For Cosima Wagner’s
version of the line, see Schopenhauer, Gespräche, 200. For an overview of the
marginalia Schopenhauer left in his copy of the Ring libretto, see Hermann Ritter,
“Schopenhauers Randbemerkungen zum Ring des Nibelungen,” Neue Musik-
Zeitung, 26 (1904), 29–30. See also Roth, “Schopenhauers Metaphysik der
Musik,” 92.
54 The notable exceptions were Il barbiere di Siviglia, Otello, Semiramide, and the
French operas Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell. See Charles S. Brauner,
“The Rossini Renaissance” in Emanuele Senici (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to Rossini, 37–38.
55 Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. ii, 462.
56 Thomas Mann, “Schopenhauer,” in Essays of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Lowe-
Porter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 392–393.
57 In 1835, Schopenhauer sent a letter to his Leipzig publisher Brockhaus requesting
sales statistics for the 1818 WWV. He was informed that “there was no sale [to
speak of].” See Brian Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (New York: Oxford
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302 yael braunschweig
University Press, 1997), 19. The few reviews that the first edition of WWV
received were on the whole negative. Schopenhauer came to blame the almost
total lack of interest in the volume on the influence of Hegel, Schelling, and
Fichte in the field of philosophy at the time (hence the vituperative attacks on
them that suffuse Schopenhauer’s writings). In 1853, John Oxenford published
an article on Schopenhauer in the Westminster Review – an article that was
quickly translated in the Vossische Zeitung, and was largely responsible for
igniting Schopenhauer’s mid-century leap to fame. See Bryan Magee, Wagner
and Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2001), 148.
58 See Thomas Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts (Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 3–6.
59 K. M. Knittel, “Wagner, Deafness, and the Reception of Beethoven’s Late Style,”
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51/1 (1998), 51.
60 Richard Wagner, Beethoven, with a Supplement from the Philosophical Works of
Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Edward Dannreuther (London: W. M. Reeves,
1903), 11.
61 Ibid., 21.
62 Ibid., 51.
63 Rossini died on November 13, 1868; Wagner’s memorial was published on
December 17, 1868 in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. For an account of
Rossini and Wagner’s 1860 meeting in Paris, see Edmund Michotte, “Richard
Wagner’s Visit to Rossini” (Paris 1860) and “An Evening at Rossini’s in Beau-
Sejour” (Passy 1858), trans. Herbert Weinstock (University of Chicago Press,
1968). For a discussion of some of the problems with this source, see
Philip Gossett’s review in Notes, 25/4 (1969), 727–728, as well as the
Introduction to this volume.
64 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Michigan:
Scholarly Press, 1972), 41–42; Wagner’s full account of Rossini here runs from
40–57.
65 In Wagner’s Zurich writings “absolute” acted as a term of contempt, to express
antipathy towards an object, performer, style, and/or composer. Grey observes
that “in the Feuerbachian context of his Zurich writings the predicate ‘absolute’
was a consciously pejorative alternative to the positively value-laden predicate
‘pure’ . . . The (pejorative) paradigm of musical autonomy in Opera and Drama
was the Rossinian aria, in flaunting the independence of music from poetry, or
rather the hegemony of the one over the other. (Here Wagner could count on
the support of a whole generation of anti-Rossinian operatic criticism, and not
only German.)” Wagner’s Musical Prose, 2–3, 13. As mentioned above in n. 27,
in Schopenhauer’s writings the adjective “pure” (rein) is used with reference to
the music of Rossini rather than the term “absolute.”
66 Schopenhauer was, for example, a counter-revolutionary, and was also anything
but a German nationalist, referring to having been born German as a “mis-
fortune.” He willed his wealth to a fund for the widows and orphans of soldiers
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Schopenhauer and Rossinian universality 303
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304 yael braunschweig
Gottschalck does refer to the essay “Schopenhauer as Educator” in his study (see
Gottschalck, Beethoven und Schopenhauer, 7–8).
75 Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 18. Magee has perhaps done the most
to introduce Schopenhauer’s metaphysics to English-language musicology, and
also wrote the article on Schopenhauer for both the 1980 and 2001 editions of
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
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