1 The definition is from the article ‘Musik’ in Sulzer, Johann Georg, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, volume 2 (Leipzig, 1774), 782 Google Scholar. The Allgemeine Theorie was originally published in Leipzig in two volumes in 1771 (A–J) and 1774 (K–Z). It was reprinted in Biel in 1777, each volume split into two parts. A second, ‘improved’ edition was published in Leipzig in four volumes in 1778–1779. A new, enlarged edition was published in Leipzig in four volumes in 1787. An enlarged version of the second edition was published in Leipzig in four volumes between 1792 and 1794. A third and final edition was published in Frankfurt and Leipzig in 1798, as was the last of a three-part set of literary additions by Christian Friedrich Blankenburg (1796–1798). All references in this article are to the first edition. Selections of the musical articles, along with a number of articles on ‘aesthetic foundations’ and ‘the creative process’, have been published as Sulzer, Johann Georg and Koch, Heinrich Christoph, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch, trans. and ed. Baker, Nancy Kovaleff and Christensen, Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. This volume includes an extract from the ‘Musik’ article, from which the cited translation is taken, page 83. Throughout this article, where no English translation is cited, the rendering is my own.

2 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Schelling, K. F. A. (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'scher Verlag, 1856–1861), series 1, volume 5, 501 Google Scholar. Except where stated otherwise, all references to Schelling's works are to this complete edition. The lectures have been translated into English as Schelling, , The Philosophy of Art, trans. Stott, Douglas W. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

3 For an overview of the rise of this new view of music see Bonds, Mark Evan, Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

4 Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 980.

5 Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 492. Translation modified from Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 110.

6 The continuations of the above quotations carry on the similarity. Sulzer continues: ‘… in order that a continuing emotion [Empfindung] that would otherwise remain the same (homogeneous), acquires rhythmic division, change [Abwechslung], and variety [Mannigfaltigkeit]’. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 980. Schelling continues: ‘for example, the emotion that a piece arouses as a whole, is quite homogeneous, singular; … this emotion, that in itself remains homogeneous, acquires change and variety through the rhythmical division’, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 492. Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 110. Schelling also follows Sulzer closely, to the point of part-quotation, in his belief that ‘everything one can call truly beautiful in music or dance actually has do to with the rhythm’; in his example of the manual worker who lightens his load by counting; in his distinction between various levels of rhythm and Takt; and in his asking how a series of undifferentiated noises (such as drum beats) can become ‘significant’, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 492–494. Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 110–111. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 976–981.

7 By implication, then, this study also contributes to current debates about the relation of music to changing perceptions of time in the eighteenth century. Recent studies include Berger, Karol, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Butt, John, Bach's Dialogue with Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Varwig, Bettina, ‘Metaphors of Time and Modernity in Bach’, Journal of Musicology 29/2 (2012), 154–190 Google Scholar; and, moving into the early nineteenth century, Chapin, Keith, ‘Time and the Keyboard Fugue’, 19th-Century Music 34/2 (2010), 186–207 Google Scholar.

8 On this evolution see Houle, George, Meter in Music, 1600–1800: Performance, Perception, and Notation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1–34 Google Scholar.

9 In the Allgemeine Theorie, Sulzer puts forward the Akzenttheorie in the articles ‘Rhythmus; Rhythmisch’ (volume 2, 975–985), ‘Musik’ (volume 2, 780–795) and ‘Takt’ (volume 2, 1130–1138), among other places. The ‘Rhythmus’ article is the focus of the present essay. The term Akzenttheorie was first used by Hugo Riemann in his Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik (Hamburg, 1884). It is, however, a convenient and accurate label for Sulzer's theory; as such, I use it in this article. On Riemann as the first to use the term Akzenttheorie see Seidel, Wilhelm, Über Rhythmustheorien der Neuzeit (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1975), 85 and 252, note 2Google Scholar.

10 Caplin, William E., ‘Theories of Musical Rhythm in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Christensen, Thomas Street (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 657–694 Google Scholar; Grant, Roger Mathew, ‘Epistemologies of Time and Metre in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-Century Music 6/1 (2009), 59–75 Google Scholar.

11 Grant explicitly follows Caplin on this point; both authors use the exact phrase ‘for the sake of convenience’. Caplin, ‘Theories of Musical Rhythm’, 668, note 34; Grant, ‘Epistemologies of Time and Metre’, 59, note 1.

12 Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (Berlin, 1771 (volume 1), 1776 (volume 2, part 1) and 1779 (volume 2, part 2)). Translated in part as Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, The Art of Strict Musical Composition, trans. Beach, David and Thym, Jurgen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. The theory of rhythm is put forward in volume 2, part 1, chapter 4 (included in the translation, 375–417). On the different editions of Die Kunst des reinen Satzes see David W. Beach, Introduction to Kirnberger, The Art of Strict Musical Composition, xi–xii.

13 With the exception of a bibliographic supplement first added to the 1794 edition and repeated verbatim in the 1798 edition, the text of the ‘Rhythmus’ article remains virtually identical across all editions.

14 Beach, Introduction to Kirnberger, The Art of Strict Musical Composition, xi.

15 Apart from the Allgemeine Theorie itself, the key source for considering musical issues of authorship in the Allgemeine Theorie is J. A. P. Schulz, ‘Ueber die in Sulzers Theorie der schönen Künste unter dem Artikel Verrückung angeführten zwey Beyspiele von Pergolesi und Graun, zur Beantwortung einer Aeusserung des Hrn. V. Dittersdorf …’, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 16 (15 January 1800), 273–280. Directly or indirectly, most recent discussions of these issues are based primarily on Schulz's account. These include those of Raymond A. Barr, ‘Schulz, Johann Abraham Peter’, and Howard Serwer, ‘Sulzer, Johann Georg’, both in Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (2 December 2011); Van der Zande, Johan, ‘Orpheus in Berlin: A Reappraisal of Johann Georg Sulzer's Theory of the Polite Arts’, Central European History 28/2 (1995), 191–192 Google Scholar; and Riley, Matthew, ‘Civilizing the Savage: Johann Georg Sulzer and the “Aesthetic Force” of Music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 127/1 (2002), 2, note 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is necessary, however, to supplement Schulz's account with those of Kirnberger and Johann Friedrich Reichardt. See Kirnberger, Johann Philipp, ‘Briefe von Kirnberger an Forkel (Mitgetheilt von H. Bellermann)’, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 29 ( 23 August 1871 ), 457–460 Google Scholar; and Reichardt, J. F., ‘J. A. P. Schulz’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 36 ( 3 June 1801 ), 597–606 Google Scholar.

16 Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 975.

17 Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 854–856, Sulzer and Koch, The Art of Musical Composition, 37–41. Sulzer writes: ‘Isolated taps upon a drum or anvil do not interest us. But as soon as we notice any order in these taps, especially if they become metric or rhythmic, they accrue aesthetic force.’ Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 855, Sulzer and Koch, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 38. The concept of order also plays a central role in the ‘Rhythmus’ article.

18 My positing of Sulzer as a central figure in eighteenth-century musical thought may seem unusual, since he is generally thought to have had ‘little or no training in music’ (Serwer, Grove Online) and to have been unsympathetic to the art. Matthew Riley, ‘Civilising the Savage’, however, has recently shown how, far from seeing music as an inferior art, Sulzer saw music as in some senses the highest of the arts. Before Riley, there had been few musicological engagements with the Allgemeine Theorie, in English at least. Jander, Owen speculates that the work may have been an influence on Beethoven in ‘Exploring Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie as a Source Used by Beethoven’, The Beethoven Newsletter 2/1 (1987), 1–7 Google Scholar. See also Christensen, Introduction to Sulzer and Koch, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 3–24.

19 Caplin, ‘Theories of Musical Rhythm’, 666–668. Grant, ‘Epistemologies of Time and Metre’, 68, describes Newton's new time as an ‘empty, open expanse’. Although Grant does not make it explicit, an ‘empty, open expanse’ could not be anything but homogeneous (what could break the homogeneity?). Both Caplin and Grant acknowledge a debt to Seidel, Über Rhythmustheorien der Neuzeit.

20 Newton, Isaac, Newton's Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Motte, Andrew (London, 1846), 505 Google Scholar <www.archive.org/details/100878576> (11 May 2011). Newton writes elsewhere that ‘The most perfect idea of God is that he be one substance, simple, indivisible, live and making live, necessarily existing everywhere and always, understanding everything to the utmost, freely willing good things, by his will effecting all possible things, and containing all other substances in Him as their underlying principle.’ Cited in McGuire, J., ‘Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source’, The British Journal for the History of Science 11 (1978), 123 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a way into the (extensive) scholarship on Newton's theology see the references in Parker, Kim Ian, ‘Newton, Locke and the Trinity: Sir Isaac's Comments on Locke's A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans ’, Scottish Journal of Theology 61/1 (2009), 40–52 Google Scholar.

21 On Sulzer's role in the composition of the Kunst des reinen Satzes see Kirnberger, ‘Briefe von Kirnberger an Forkel’, 458.

22 In the Kunst des reinen Satzes, the primary metaphor for homogeneous time is that of a flowing stream: Kirnberger, Kunst des reinen Satzes, volume 2, part 1, 113. See also Kirnberger, The Art of Strict Musical Composition, 381–382. In Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie, the primary metaphor is of rainfall: Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, volume 2, 976.

23 A canonical example of this is found in the Gospel of John: ‘Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive’, John 7: 37–39 (New International Version (NIV)). Among a host of Biblical metaphors concerning (flowing) water see also John 4: 7–15: ‘Jesus answered, “… whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life”’ (verse 14, NIV). Specifically on rainfall see Psalm 68: ‘When you, God, went out before your people … the earth shook, the heavens poured down rain, before God … You gave abundant showers, O God; you refreshed your weary inheritance’, Psalm 68: 7–9 (NIV).

24 For two especially important discussions of the concept, both of which trace the phrase to Benjamin, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), 22–36 Google Scholar, and Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 54–59 Google Scholar.

25 Benjamin, Walter, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, in Erzählen: Schriften zur Theorie der Narration und zur literarischen Prosa, ed. Honold, Alexander (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007), 129–140 Google Scholar. Translated as ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, ed. Arendt, Hannah, trans. Zohn, Harry (London: Fontana, 1992), 245–255 Google Scholar. The older time-consciousness theorized by Benjamin was distinctly theological: a recent investigation by Giorgio Agamben has shown how there is not only a ‘conceptual correspondence’ but also a ‘textual correspondence’ between Benjamin's essay and passages from the letters of St Paul. See Agamben, Giorgio, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Dailey, Patricia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 144 Google Scholar.

26 Benjamin, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’, 136, and Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, 252.

27 Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Riga, 1781, second edition 1787)Google Scholar. In citing from the Kritik, I follow convention in giving references to the page numbers for the original first (A) and second (B) editions. The standard English translation (from which all citations are taken) is Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

28 A24–25/B38–39, A26–27/B42–43 (space is a form of intuition); A30–35/B46–52 (time is a form of intuition).

29 For Kant, time is the necessary form of intuition of inner sense, ‘the intuition of our self and our inner state’; A33/B49. Space is the necessary form of intuition of outer sense, our relationship with the external world. Time, however, is, in a sense, more fundamental than space. For inner sense (governed by time) does not rely on outer sense (governed by space), but outer sense does rely on inner sense; A34/B50.

30 Kant makes this explicit later in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, when he states famously that ‘thoughts without content are empty’; A51/B75.

31 Despite a request from Schelling that only the section on tragedy be published, the lectures were published in 1859 as part of the complete edition edited by his son, K. F. A. Schelling (Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 353–736). On the circumstances of their publication see K. F. A. Schelling's Introduction to volume 5 of the first series of the collected edition, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, v–xiii. According to René Wellek, the lectures circulated in manuscript form prior to publication: Wellek, , A History of Modern Criticism 1750–1950, volume 2, The Romantic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 82 Google Scholar. Ward, Patricia A. makes a similar claim in ‘Coleridge's Critical Theory of the Symbol’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 8/1 (1966), 23 Google Scholar.

32 Schelling opens the Philosophie der Kunst with a general outline of the foundations of his philosophical position. Although much simplified, the following summary is based as closely as possible on this outline. Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 373–387; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 23–32.

33 The key works of Schelling's early Identitätsphilosophie are, apart from the Philosophie der Kunst, the 1801 Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (Presentation of My System of Philosophy), Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 4, 105–212, and the 1802 Bruno, ein Gespräch (Bruno: A Dialogue), Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 4, 213–332. The latter is available in translation as Schelling, , Bruno, or on the Natural and Divine Principle of Things, trans. Vater, Michael (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984)Google Scholar. For two lucid discussions of Schelling's Identitätsphilosophie see Bowie, Andrew, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993), 55–90 Google Scholar, and Beiser, Frederick, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 551–595 Google Scholar.

34 Schelling expounds this doctrine forcefully in Bruno: ‘since we make the unity of all opposites our first principle, unity itself along with … opposition, will form the highest pair of opposites. In order to make unity the highest principle, we must think of it as encompassing even this opposition of unity and opposition, and determine that unity as the one, in which unity and opposition, sameness and difference, are one’. Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 4, 236; Schelling, Bruno, 136.

35 Again, Schelling's discussion in Bruno helps to elaborate the more condensed Introduction of his Identitätsphilosophie in the Philosophie der Kunst. Here Schelling notes that absolute sameness precludes human cognition: ‘Are we not forced to say … that unity and multiplicity … are absolutely combined [verknüpft] in one and the same absolute … ? … But, on the other hand, is it not evident that to finite cognition, unity means only endless possibility, while multiplicity comprises the actuality of things?’ Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 4, 244; Schelling, Bruno, 143.

36 Schelling writes: ‘The principle of time within the subject is self-consciousness, which is precisely the informing [Ineinsbildung] … of the unity of consciousness into multiplicity’. Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 491; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 109.

37 Despite a growing literature on Schelling, his views on music have attracted relatively little attention. See, however, the following: Schueller, Herbert M., ‘Schelling's Theory of the Metaphysics of Music’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15/4 (1957), 461–476 Google Scholar; Dahlhaus, Carl, Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik (Laaber: Laaber, 1988), 248–256 Google Scholar; Fubini, Enrico, History of Music Aesthetics, trans. Hatwell, Michael (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 272–274 Google Scholar; Biddle, Ian, ‘F. W. J. Schelling's Philosophie der Kunst: An Emergent Semiology of Music’, in Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, ed. Bent, Ian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25–36 Google Scholar; Bowie, Andrew, ‘Music and the Rise of Aesthetics’, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Samson, Jim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 39–41 Google Scholar; Bowie, , Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche, second edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 102–139 Google Scholar; Bowie, , Music, Philosophy, and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially 150–152 Google Scholar; Wanning, Berbeli, ‘Schelling’, in Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction, ed. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz and Fürbeth, Oliver, trans. Gillespie, Susan H. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 95–120 Google Scholar; Shaw, Devin Zane, Freedom and Nature in Schelling's Philosophy of Art (London: Continuum, 2010), 118–119 Google Scholar. I am grateful to Devin Zane Shaw for sharing material from his book prior to publication.

38 Schelling criticizes Sulzer in the course of rejecting Kant's view of music, which, despite not drawing specifically on Sulzer's Akzenttheorie, takes the same broad position that the purpose of music is to move the emotions of the listener. Schelling writes that Kant's explanation of music is ‘extremely subjective … almost like that of Sulzer, who says that the purpose of music is to awaken the emotions – something that could just as easily be applied to many other things, such as concerts of fragrances or tastes’. Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 487; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 103.

39 It is now also apparent that Schelling's equation of the forms of music with those of ‘the eternal things’ and ‘things in themselves’ (in the plural) is potentially misleading, for Schelling sees the true nature of reality as being ultimate oneness (with no possibility of plurality). The explanation lies in Schelling's attempt – sidestepped in this article for the sake of simplicity – to introduce into his conception of God a certain kind of difference (Potenz, or potence) that, Schelling believes, is not really difference at all. For the present purposes, it is sufficient simply to note that Schelling's terms of reference point beyond the everyday phenomenal world to some greater reality, be it conceived in Platonic terms (the eternal things) or in Kantian terms (things in themselves).

40 A particularly tortuous statement of this perspective is provided by Carl Dahlhaus, who, aware that the new view of music arose before the music with which he wishes to associate it, suggests that these ideas ‘predicated the existence of instrumental music’ to which it could be appropriately attached. With particular reference to Tieck's (unsystematic) statement of the new view of music in his 1799 essay on the symphony, Dahlhaus writes that Tieck's view of music ‘did not find an adequate object until [1810, when] E. T. A. Hoffmann borrowed Tieck's language in order to do justice to Beethoven’. Dahlhaus's desire to attach the new view of music to the masterpieces of the Viennese school, especially those of Beethoven, is so strong that he ends up implying that the new view of music was a response to music that had not yet been written. Dahlhaus, , The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Lustig, Roger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 65, 90Google Scholar.

41 For an earlier statement of Bonds, 's position see his widely read article ‘Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 50/2–3 (1997), 387–420 Google Scholar.

42 Hoffmann, E. T. A., ‘Recension: Sinfoni … par Louis van Beethoven ’, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 40 and 41 ( 4 and 11 July 1810 ), 630–642, 652–659Google Scholar. Translated as ‘Review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony’, in E .T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings, ed. Charlton, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 234–251 Google Scholar.

43 Schelling writes of briefly of ‘musical painting, which only a completely degenerate and sunken sense of taste can find good in music, such as that contemporary sensibility that finds edification in the bleating of the sheep in Haydn's creation music’. Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 496; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 112.

44 The most important of these for a discussion of Schelling's attitudes towards art are the aforementioned Bruno of 1802 and the 1800 System des transcendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental Idealism): Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 3, 327–634; translated as System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. Heath, Peter (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

45 Schelling, F. W. J., Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, im Auftrag der Schelling-Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Jantzen, Jörg, Buchheim, Thomas, Jacobs, Wilhelm G. and Peetz, Siegbert (Stuttgart: frommann-holzboog, 1976–)Google Scholar, series 3, volume 1: Briefwechsel 1786–1799, ed. Irmgard Möller and Walter Schieche (2001), series 3, volume 2, parts 1–2: Briefwechsel 1800–1802, ed. Thomas Kisser and Walter Schieche (2010).

46 Bonds, Music as Thought, 9.

47 I would also stress that Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment is not primarily a work on, or in, aesthetics, but forms rather that part of his system of philosophy dealing with the mental power (Kraft) of judgment. The still frequent translation of Kritik der Urteilskraft as ‘Critique of Judgment’ is potentially misleading in this respect; hence my following the title of the 2000 translation by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews.

48 Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 365; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 14.

49 Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, series 1, volume 5, 363; Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 13.