Eduard Hanslick (11 September 18256 August 1904) was an Austrian

music critic '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of m ...

, aesthetician and historian. Among the leading critics of his time, he was the chief music critic of the '' Neue Freie Presse'' from 1864 until the end of his life. His best known work, the 1854 treatise ''Vom Musikalisch-Schönen'' (''On the Musically Beautiful''), was a landmark in the aesthetics of music and outlines much of his artistic and philosophical beliefs on music. Hanslick was a conservative critic and championed absolute music over programmatic music for much of his career. As such, he sided with and promoted the faction of

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...

and

Johannes Brahms Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period (music), Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, oft ...

in the so-called " War of the Romantics", often deriding the works of composers such as

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...

and

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

Life and career

Eduard Hanslick was born in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

(then in the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a Multinational state, multinational European Great Powers, great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the Habsburg monarchy, realms of the Habsburgs. Duri ...

), the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslik, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of Hanslik's piano pupils, the daughter of a

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish merchant from

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. At the age of eighteen Hanslick went to study music with Václav Tomášek, one of Prague's renowned musicians. He also studied law at Prague University and obtained a degree in that field, but his amateur study of music eventually led to writing music reviews for small town newspapers, then the ''Wiener Musik-Zeitung'' and eventually the '' Neue Freie Presse'', where he was music critic until retirement. Whilst still a student, in 1845, he met

in Marienbad; the composer, noting the young man's enthusiasm, invited him to

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

to hear his opera '' Tannhäuser''; here Hanslick also met

In 1854 he published his influential book ''On the Beautiful in Music''. By this time his interest in Wagner had begun to cool; he had written a disparaging review of the first Vienna production of '' Lohengrin''. From this point on, Hanslick found his sympathies moving away from the so-called 'music of the Future' associated with Wagner and

, and more towards music he conceived as directly descending from the traditions of

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

and Schumann — in particular the music of

(who dedicated to him his set of waltzes opus 39 for piano duet). In 1869, in a revised edition of his essay '' Jewishness in Music'', Wagner attacked Hanslick as 'of gracefully concealed Jewish origin', and asserted that his supposedly Jewish style of criticism was anti-German. It is sometimes claimed that Wagner caricatured Hanslick in his opera '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' as the carping critic Beckmesser (whose name was originally to be Veit Hanslich). Newman, Ernest. ''The Life of Richard Wagner, volume 3''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1976, , p.199 Hanslick's unpaid lectureship at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

led in 1870 to a full professorship in history and aesthetic of music and later to a doctorate ''honoris causa''. Hanslick often served on juries for musical competitions and held a post at the Austrian Ministry of Culture and fulfilled other administrative roles. He retired after writing his memoirs, but still wrote articles on the most important premieres of the day, up to his death in 1904 in Baden.

Views on music

Hanslick's tastes were conservative; in his memoirs he said that for him musical history really began with Mozart and culminated in Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. He is best remembered today for his critical advocacy of Brahms as against the school of Wagner, an episode in 19th century music history sometimes called the War of the Romantics. The critic Richard Pohl, of the ''

Neue Zeitschrift für Musik The New Journal of Music (, and abbreviated to NZM) is a music magazine, co-founded in Leipzig by Robert Schumann, his teacher and future father-in law Friedrich Wieck, Julius Knorr and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke. Its first issue appe ...

'', represented the progressive composers of the " Music of the Future". Being a close friend of Brahms from 1862, Hanslick possibly had some influence on Brahms's composing, often getting to hear new music before it was published. Hanslick saw Wagner's reliance on dramatics and word painting as inimical to the nature of music, which he thought to be expressive solely by virtue of its form, and not through any extra-musical associations. On the other hand, he referred to extra-musicality when he asked, "When you play Chopin's mazurkas, do you not feel the mournful and oppressive air of the Battle of Ostroleka?" (Hanslick 1848, p. 157). The theoretical framework of Hanslick's criticism is expounded in his book of 1854, ''Vom Musikalisch-Schönen'' (''On the Beautiful in Music''), which started as an attack on the Wagnerian aesthetic and established itself as an influential text, subsequently going through many editions and translations in several languages. Other targets for Hanslick's heavy criticism were Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf. Of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, he accused both Tchaikovsky and the soloist, Adolph Brodsky, of putting the audience "through hell" with music "which stinks to the ear"; he was also lukewarm towards the same composer's Sixth Symphony. Hanslick is noted as one of the first widely influential music critics. While his aesthetics and his criticism are typically considered separately, they are importantly connected. Hanslick was an outspoken opponent of the music of Liszt and Wagner, which broke down traditional musical forms as a means of communicating something extra-musical. His opposition to "the music of the future" is congruent with his aesthetics of music: the meaning of music is the form of music. It is along these lines that Hanslick became one of Brahms's champions and often pitted him against Wagner.

Works (German editions)

* Eduard Hanslick, "Vom Musikalisch-Schönen". Leipzig 1854
online version
* Eduard Hanslick, "Geschichte des Konzertwesens in Wien", 2 vol. Vienna 1869–70 * Eduard Hanslick, "Die moderne Oper", 9 vol. Berlin 1875–1900 * Eduard Hanslick, "Aus meinem Leben", 2 vol. Berlin 1894 * Eduard Hanslick, "Suite. Aufsätze über Musik und Musiker". Vienna 1884

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

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External links

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Geoffrey Payzant and Eduard Hanslick collection
a
University of Toronto Music Library

Eduard Hanslick
''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Hanslick, Eduard Scholars from the Austrian Empire Music critics from Austria-Hungary Musicologists from Austria-Hungary Journalists from Austria-Hungary Austrian music critics Austrian musicologists Austrian music journalists Charles University alumni German Bohemian people Austrian people of German Bohemian descent Czech Jews Classical music critics Writers from Prague 1825 births 1904 deaths Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery Academic staff of the University of Vienna 19th-century Austrian musicologists Beethoven scholars Brahms scholars Bruckner scholars Krommer scholars Liszt scholars Mozart scholars Schubert scholars Wagner scholars