Vom musiktheoretisch Schönen, Wahren und Guten

The aesthetic category of beauty, the epistemological category of truth, and the ethical category of the good constitute three central coordinates in the history and theory of Western art and music. During the period of modernism (considered here as lasting from the mid-18th century through its postmodern phase), these categories underwent a major shift, involving at its most extreme a reversal from beauty to ugliness, from truth to falseness, and from good to evil. While the speculative, regulative and descriptive traditions of music theory have participated in this development, the relativist climate of post-normative pluralism invites a reassessment of those categories in current music-theoretical discourse. At issue is the relevance of beauty, truth and goodness in and for a theory of music. This essay has two parts. The first part positions Friedrich Schiller and Theodor W. Adorno as two thinkers that articulate the difference between an aesthetics of beauty and an aesthetics of truth – a difference that stems from Adorno’s critique of idealist philosophy and aesthetics. The second part considers the rapprochement in modern aesthetics between art and theory by pursuing the notion of an aesthetics of music theory. The idea of the music-theoretically beautiful is discussed by drawing on examples from Neo-Riemannian theory (Richard Cohn) and Transformational Theory (David Lewin).