INTRODUCTION

Schopenhauer did not write very much about music. His musical remarks take up surprisingly little space in his otherwise lengthy, but classically pellucid, philosophical corpus. Even granting that the remarks are intended only to make sense as part of a total metaphysical system, they are, critics have found, frustratingly incomplete. Nevertheless, no philosopher's writings about music have proved more influential. Exploited, as Thomas Mann thought, by “enthusiastic admirers and fanatical converts,” Schopenhauer was not wrong in believing that musiciankind would learn something from him it would never forget. Almost the mere mention of his name has come to stand for an entire worldview about the status, meaning, and value of classical music. He articulated what modern commentators sometimes call “the Idea of Music.” Deservedly or not, he has become to musical aesthetics what Beethoven has become to classical music itself – a central reference point in a range of historically momentous debates. That Schopenhauer was largely responsible for providing the rationale behind the canonization of Beethoven only renders this comparison more fitting.