By the turn of the nineteenth century instrumental music had been given a new ontology. It simply existed – a matter of being rather than meaning. It could miraculously generate itself from nothing. And not only was it given the sovereignty of auto-genesis, but it acquired the godlike ability to exist even if the entire world ceased to be, for music was its own cosmos, ‘a self-enclosed world’, spinning itself out as its own origin, cause and totality. In its instrumental purity, music was hailed as absolute, which is to be assigned the original ‘i am’ that had once belonged to a now marginalised deity. Indeed, it was worshipped with religious devotion; the veneration of instrumental music, according to Carl Dahlhaus, was itself a religion. To its followers music revealed itself as a work that had to be internalised as an aesthetic experience. It offered a kind of salvation of works through a Eucharist of criticism and analysis. This new ontology is the foundation of musicology. But what is now a demystified object of investigation was then a mystical figure of initiation – a way to self-knowledge. The German Romantics were not simply making up metaphors to philosophise about music; musical ontology was an inner reality; it was a way for the romantic ego to come to terms with its own being.

The absolute autonomy of music is a romantic discourse. And it is only a discourse. And it is only a discourse. In reality, music cannot simply exist.