Katherine Hirt

When Machines Play Chopin

Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies
Edited by
Scott Denham Irene Kacandes
Jonathan Petropoulos
Volume 8
De Gruyter
Katherine Hirt
When Machines Play Chopin
Musical Spirit and Automation in
Nineteenth-Century German Literature
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-023239-4
e-ISBN 978-3-11-023240-0
ISSN 1861-8030
Library of Congress Catalojging-in-Publication Data
Hirt, Katherine Maree.
When machines play Chopin : musical spirit and automation in
nineteenth-century German literature / by Katherine Hirt.
p. cm. (Interdisciplinary German cultural studies ; 8)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-3-11-023239-4 (hardcopy : alk. paper)
1. German literature 19th century History and criticism.
2. Musical instruments in literature. 3. Music in literature.
4. Music and literature Germany History 19th century.
I. Title.
PT345.H55 2010
830.9'3578-dc22
2010013654
raphic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http ://dnb.d-n b. de.
2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Gottingen
00 Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
This book began as my dissertation project, and I would like to thank my
dissertation advisor, Diana Behler, and committee members Jane Brown
and Eric Ames for their support, encouragement and suggestions for both
the dissertation and the book. I would also like to extend my gratitude to
Irene Kacandes for inquiring about my work for this series and the editors
for their comments and Scott Denham for his careful editing. I thank
Cornelia Saier, Manuela Gerlof and Doug St. John for helping me prepare
the final version. Additional thanks go to Steven Rumph at the University
of Washingtons School of Music for his suggestions on directions for
research on late-eighteenth-century aesthetics, as well as Marshall Brown
and John Rahn for their course on music and philosophy, particularly the
discussions on Hegel. The ideas that went into this book are the result of
many conversations, and I am indebted to Barbara, Wolfgang, and Friede-
rike Samel, whose questions and suggestions helped shape the topic of the
dissertation. In addition, I would like to thank the following people for
their comments on the early drafts of the dissertation, which led to the
chapters in this book; Morgan Koerner, Amy Emm, Viktoria Harms, Tim
Gruenewald, Kevin Johnson, Geoffrey Cox, Gabi Eichmanns, Sabina
Pasic, Yerena Schowengerdt-Kuzmany, and Sunny Parrott. Neither the
dissertation nor this book could have existed without support from many
friends and extended family members, especially Heidi Tilghman, Michele
Vanhee, Julie Fuglistahler, Rebecca Hirt, Helen Baker St. John and Debo
rah Lajiness. I am especially grateful to my son, Edwin, for being as easy
going as a four-month-old can be and to my husband, Doug, for his
patience, understanding and continuous encouragement of my work.
Chapter One Towards Autonomy: Imitation and Expression at the
Turn of the Nineteenth Century........................................... 1
Chapter Two E.T.A. Hoffmanns Aesthetics of Music and Musical
Machines in The Automata, The Sandman and
Music Reviews........................................................................33
Chapter Three Schopenhauer and Hanslick: Toward a Definition of
Instrumental Music as an Autonomous A r t .................... 65
Chapter Four Virtuosity and the Experience of Listening in Heinrich
Heines Music Criticism and Florentine Nights .......... 92
Chapter Five Rilkes Phonograph: the Talking Machine and
Imagined Sound.................................................................. 122
Conclusions............................................................................................................ 149
Bibliography........................................................................................................ 154
Index.................................................................................................................... 168
Chapter One Towards Autonomy: Imitation and Expression at the
Turn of the Nineteenth Century........................................... 1
Chapter Two E.T.A. Hoffmanns Aesthetics of Music and Musical
Machines in The Automata, The Sandman and
Music Reviews........................................................................33
Chapter Three Schopenhauer and Hanslick: Toward a Definition of
Instrumental Music as an Autonomous A r t .................... 65
Chapter Four Virtuosity and the Experience of Listening in Heinrich
Heines Music Criticism and Florentine Nights .......... 92
Chapter Five Rilkes Phonograph: the Talking Machine and
Imagined Sound.................................................................. 122
Conclusions............................................................................................................ 149
Bibliography........................................................................................................ 154
Index.................................................................................................................... 168
Chapter One
Towards Autonomy: Imitation and Expression at the Turn of
the Nineteenth Century
The early nineteenth-century opposition between emotions and machines
created problems in defining instrumental music as a sublime form of
human expression. In German-language texts that explore music aesthet
ics and the relationship between music and poetry, descriptions of music
as the natural expression of human emotions placed music aesthetics at
odds with the physicality of musical sound and musical performance
practices. Musics perceived ability in the nineteenth century to commu
nicate emotion more immediately than words or pictures leads to Scho
penhauers claim of its supremacy above all other arts as the direct repre
sentation of the Will. However, as the literary works and music reviews
show, this height can only be reserved for the abstract sense of music as a
poetic aesthetic; it remains impossible to reach in musical practice. Fre
deric Chopins piano music offers an excellent example of the paradoxes
that arise in music aesthetics between the sublimity of human expression
through musical sound and the technical mastery needed to perform with
machine-like accuracy. While lyrical and expressive, Chopins works are
technically very difficult to master. Chopins compositions and his style
of playing in the mid-nineteenth century thus show the contradictions of
his time that existed in musical performance between mechanical aspects
of learning technique and the emotional power of music. This book
focuses on these contradictions in German prose works by E.T.A. Hoff
mann, Heinrich Heine, and Rainer Maria Rilke and explores the nexus of
machines, musical performance practices, and the search for artistic genius
in the nineteenth century.
The relationship between mechanical means o f practicing music and
artistic expression does not occur as a contradiction until the end of the
eighteenth century. Early Romantics attempted to separate expression,
spirit, and poetic fantasy from reason (Schlegel), resulting in the separation
of a mechanical exterior, the body, from the spiritual interior, the
soul. However, music and machines have belonged together since long
before the industrialization of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.