On Historical Criticism Author(s): Leo Treitler Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp.

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ON HISTORICAL CRITICISM
By LEOTREITLER

Thereis a rattlingof skeletonsin the halls of humane learning. It is natural that in the conduct of our daily work we avoid direct and interferingcontact with its fundamentals.But it is clear, too, that there must come times of reflection about the goals that are defined and the ways that are marked. If sharp attacks upon tradition are symptomatic,then this is such a time. The most trenchantcriticismshave reached for the widest audience: the wholesale denunciation of humanities and humanists in William
Arrowsmith's essay The Shame of Our Graduate Schools' and the

radical curative proposals offeredby Eric Larabeein his essay Saving the Humanities2("shattering the sanctity of jealously-guarded department boundaries, strangling the Ph.D. octopus, punishing pointless research,abolishing tenure,loweringinflatedsalaries..."). In the field of musical scholarship acrid exchanges in the pages of
Perspectives of New Music and the Journal of the American Musicolog-

ical Society3 have been only the sharp edge of a-series that includes
'Harper's Magazine, March 1966, pp. 51-59. Symptomaticthough it may be, Arrowsmith's broadside is not altogether well informed. Thus his linking of classics and musicology as the most backward of the humanistic disciplines is surely ill-advised, considering the enormous differencesin the backgroundand currentstate of the two.
2Commentary,December1966, pp. 53-60.

3Charles Rosen, The Proper Study of Music, in Perspectives,I (1962), 80-88; Joseph Kerman, The Proper Study of Music: A Reply, in Perspectives,II (1963), 151-59; Kerman, A Profile for AmericanMusicology, in JAMS, XVIII (1965), 65-69; Edward E. Lowinsky, Character and Purposes of AmericanMusicology; A Reply to Joseph Kerman, ibid., 222-34; Communication from Kerman,ibid., 426-27.

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some rather more reflectivewriting.4The field of art history has seen some serious theorizing in the work of James Ackerman, E. H. Gombrich, ErwinPanofsky, and Meyer Schapiro.5 A recurrenttheme in this new round of questioning and defining stems from a unique condition of historical studies in the arts. It is that the central object of study is an artifact born into a special, that is an esthetic, relationship with the culture of which it is a part, and which continues through its survival to be both a historical record and an object of esthetic perception.It is a work of art, and the historian is obliged to come to terms with it as such; "the curse and the blessing," Panofsky wrote, "of art history."6There is a repeated show of concern whether we have met that obligation, whetherour history is sound from the standpoint of what is called "criticism."Ackerman, Arrowsmith,and Kerman, especially, have argued that a more prominent place for criticism in our methodology is the most pressing need, and I shall take that assertion as a point of departurein the present essay. But I shall suggest that the diagnosis on which it rests can be misleading, that certainly in music-historicalliteraturecritical assessments abound, and that the issue is not "how much?" or "how central?" but rather "what kind?" and "on what premises?"I shall offer an alternative view, not that history and criticism are too widely separated but that they have been, in a sense, too closely confounded. The cry for criticismhas had something in it of the cranky, nagging child who does not articulatewhat it is he wants. We need to know what a critical account of an art-work may be, or what it may seek to do;
4WarrenAllen,Philosophiesof Music History, New York, 1962; Frank L. Harrison, Mantle Hood, Claude V. Palisca, Musicology (The PrincetonStudies:Humanistic Scholarship in Amer. ica), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963; Lewis Lockwood's review of the latter in Perspectives,III (1964), 119-27; Harold S. Powers, review of Allan Merriam, The Anthropology of Music, in V Perspectives, (1966), 161-71. 5Some principal writings: Ackerman, A Theory of Style, in Journal of Aestheticsand Art XX (1961), 227-37; Ackerman,with Rhys Carpenter, and Archeology (The PrinceCriticism, Art ton Studies; see note 4), 1963; Gombrich,Art and Illusion, 2nd ed., revised, New York, 1961; Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art, London, 1963; Panofsky, Das Problem des Stils in der bildendenKunst, in Zeitschrift r Aesthetik,X (1915), 460-67; the discussion of the latter is continued in Der Begriffdes Kunstwollens,in fir Zeitschrift Aesthetik,XIV (1919-20), 21-39; Panofsky,Meaning in the Visual Arts, Papers in and on Art History, New York, 1955; Schapiro, Style (reprintedin Morris Philipson, ed., Aesthetics Today, New York, 1961, from A. L. Kroeber, ed., Anthropology Today, Chicago, 1953); Schapiro, On Perfection,Coherence,and Unity of Form and Content,in Sidney Hook, ed., Art and Philosophy, New York University Instituteof Philosophy, New York, 1966, pp. 3-15. 6Der Begriffdes Kunstwollens(see note 5).

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and we need to know how it relatesto a historical account. I have raised the first of these questionselsewhereand attempteda number of formulations of the objectives of criticism, as the basis for a series of arguments for the relevance of the historian's evidence to the interpretationof musical works.7I argued therethat in the analysis of art-workswe seek to distinguish the fortuitous from the significant, and the uniquely significant from the conventional, and that the evidence of the historian is directlyrelevantto that task. This is the "historical point of view," in one sense of that expression.8My object here is to explore another sense by asking whetherthere is a special "historical account"of art-works. How does the historian understand a work of art? To begin the investigation of this question I should like to set forth one point of view about how it is to be answered, a point of view that has had great influence on the discipline of musicology and related fields. It distinguishes, first, betweena commonplace meaning of "understand" that suggests a sense of empathetic or intuitive familiarity, and the scientificunderstandingof natural or historical phenomena;"I understand how you feel," as against "Learn to understandthe principles of the internal combustion engine." In the second of these meaningsand it is only the second that is relevant to the systematic study of anything, according to this point of view-to understandsomething is to be able to explain it, and to explain a thing is to give its causes. Briefly, understandingis knowledgeof causes.9
7MusicAnalysis in an Historical Context.College Music Society Symposium, VI (1966). 8This point of view has been newly representedby Edward.Lippmanin The Problem of A Musical Hermeneutics: Protest and Analysis, in Art and Philosophy (see note5), pp. 307-35. 9This apparently innocent distinctionin meanings for our word "understand"rests on the ancient epistemological split between subjectiveand objectiveknowledge,that is to say the dissociation of the knower from what is known. It harbors issues of great importanceand ultimate relevance that must be mentioned here, even though these remarks may not appear to be immediatelybasic to the argumentthat is to follow. From the point of view that I have been sketching above, statementsmust derive their validity either from factual correctness(verifiability) or formal consistency(as in a definitionor mathematicalequation). "Subjective"statementscall do neither, and are therefore disqualifiedfrom the statusof knowledge and relegatedto the category of expressions that includes also cries of pain and ecstasy. The language of formal logic represents, then, a distillation of the substantivecontentof rational, "objective"statements,and, by corollary, statements that are not reducibleto the notation of formal logic are not "objective." These remarks apply withequal forceto long-termintellectualprocesses, such as experimentation and theory development,and, relevant to this discussion,causal explanation. This canon forms

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To complete the exposition of this point of view it is necessary to clarify what is meant by causes. They are of two kinds: precipitating conditions -conditions that must obtain in order for a given event to occur-and general laws under which the given event must occur whenever the specified conditions obtain. If I wish to explain some phenomenon, for example the production of ice cubes in my home freezer, I must show that certain conditions prevail--the tray of water has been placed in an enclosure in which a temperature below 32 degrees F. is maintained--and I must cite a general law that is in effect-"At sea level the freezing-point of water is 32 degrees F." It follows that the power to explain is tantamount to the power to predict, for, given the precipitating conditions, the general law tells us that the event in question will ensue. If I can explain my ice cubes, I can also predict that whenever I place another tray of water in the same enclosure under the same conditions I shall have more ice cubes.'? Each case in which the same train of events is set in motion is covered by
the basis of the scientismto whichthe humanities and social sciences have aspired since the 19th writing. That century, and it now informs a good deal of music-historicaland music-theoretical being the case, it is necessaryto note at once that, as a model for rational discourse, this bipartite reduction of knowledge, with its methodological consequences, has come to be widely regarded as an oversimplificationand even as a delusion. I quote Michael Polanyi: "I start by In rejectingthe ideal of scientificdetachment. the exact sciences, this false ideal is perhaps harmless, for it is in fact disregardedthereby scientists. But we shall see that it exercises a destructive influencein biology, psychology, and sociology, and falsifiesour whole outlook far beyond the domain of science."(Personal Knowledge, Chicago, 1958, p. viii.) And on the principal subject of this discussion, Mario Bunge wrote:"The reductionof lawfulness[orderliness] to causality is a mistake in scientificmethodand, like other mistakes of this sort, it is liable to have noxious consequencesfor every general world outlook that claims to be based on science"(Causality, Cambridge, 1959, p. 262). The opposition is voiced in diverse fields-linguistic and analytic philosophy, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of science, gestalt psychology, the theory of art-and it is not coordinated. It is impossible to formulate alternativeviews in this space, but a number of central principlesshould be mentioned:1) Knowing is an active process of assimilation that incorporates an act of appraisal. It is like skill and connoisseurshipin being 2 partly inarticulateand inarticulable. ) Theory-seen as interpretative patternsor structures- is in effect a screen between the knower and the things known. We do not regard facts as being true except as they have a place in some theoreticalframework.Particularsare meaningless if we lose sight of the patternthey jointly constitute.Observationand theory are related in an interplay, not a hierarchy or a strictly ordered time-sequence. Verifiabilityas the measure of 3) lawfulnessyields ground to intelligibility, coherence,potentialexplanatorypower. 4) The knower finds himself within a continuous matrix that connects the world of "objective"reality, directly given through experienceand activity, with consciousness. 5) Formal logic is not identical with meaningfuldiscourse;it is one- highly specializedand selective- among several varieties thereof. '?This is one of the most vulnerable points in this view of explhnation. It has been argued that, although explanation and predictionmay show parallel formal structures,they do not always turn out to be reversible.The basis for the argument is the assertion that each of the terms "cause," "law," "explanation," and "prediction"in fact covers a wider range of referrentsthan

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the same general law, and this paradigm for explanation is therefore known as the "covering law model." The general viewpoint that I have briefly outlined here is known as the Neo-Positivist position. Its central thesis is that scientific study means systematic investigation of causes, in the sense of the covering law model for explanation. While this doctrine took form earliest in the context of the natural sciences, its wider application to all fields of knowledge is the subject of continuing and urgent discussion. For the study of history the central Neo-Positivist document is Carl Hempel's

well-known essay The Function of GeneralLaws in History.1 In his

address to the New York meeting of the International Musicological Society in 1961, Arthur Mendel affirmed the correctness of Hempel's position and formally extended its application to the discipline of musicology.l2 In the course of his exposition Mendel distinguished, in terms of levels of generality, between two phases of the musicologist's work: his establishing of lower-order facts, such as the date and place of birth of some composer, and the relating of higher-order facts, such as musical styles. The first has to do with the treatment of evidence, the second with what I shall call, rather loosely for the moment, the writing of narrative history. For the remainder of this essay I shall confine myself to the second of these subjects, and I shall raise these fundamental questions: 1) Does causal explanation according to the covering law model

is recognizedby the covering law model. See William Dray, Laws and Explanation in History, London, 1957, Chap. III (pp. 58-85) and Bunge, op. cit., pp. 307-32. A minute example: the statement"Lions are fierce"provides the basis for a predictionon which one's life may depend, but it would not explain a single manifestationof a particularlion's fierceness.I shall want to considerthe statusof such "explanations"in musichistory furtheron. As students of music especially, we should not be surprisedby this lack of symmetry between explanation and prediction. The analysis of music, even as the analysis of narrative or dramatic fiction, comes down very much to a detailed demonstrationof the way in which the events of the work are motivated.Being convincedby such a demonstrationwe do not, however, go on to claim that it was all predictable.On the contrary, we would say that it is just within that artisticexcellenceis located. this gap between explanationand prediction 'Journal of Philosophy, 39 (1942), reprintedin Feigl and Sellars, eds., Readings in Philosophical Analysis, New York, 1949, and Patrick Gardiner, Theoriesof History, New York, 1959. "Evidence and Explanation, in InternationalMusicological Society Report of the Eighth Congress, New York 1961, Kassel, 1962, pp. 3-18. The reader will find there a far more detailed and thoughtfulexpositionof this point of view than space allows here.

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adequately represent what historians do when they explain historical phenomena?13 2) What are the consequencesof the placementof causal knowledge at the centerof music-historical study? It might be well to reflectfirst on the special problems that may be encounteredwhen the historical facts we seek to explain are art-works or classes of art-works. If we wish to explain how it happened, say, that Haydn composed twelve symphonies for performancein London, we can readily refer to a chain of events and conditions that lead up to the fact in question. But suppose we seek to explain why it is that in the next-last of those symphonies (No. 103) there is a return near the conclusion of the first movement to the tempo and music of the introduction. Now we seem to enter a differentrealm, for it is hardly possible to imagiae such an explanation in termsof precipitatingconditions and covering laws. This would suggest that there are at least two kinds of explaining of art-works:explaining the causes, but also explaining the quality of their being. In music history we often explain one work or style by referenceto another, antecedentwork or style. The establishing of the relationship of antecedenceis a necessary and illuminatingpart of history writing,
3This question is not raised here for the first time. The following brief review incorporates some of my own arguments, but it owes much to the selections from a very extensive literature that I list here and cite specificallyin the context of my discussion. H. Butterfield,The WhigInterpretation History, London, 1931. of Arthur Child, Thoughts on the Historiology of Neo-Positivism, in Journal of Philosophy, LVII(1960), 665. BenedettoCroce, Historical Determinismand Philosophy of History, reprintedin Gardiner, Theories. Alan Donagan, Explanation in History, in Gardiner,Theories. William Dray, Laws and Explanations in History (see note 10), Explaining What, in Gardiner, Theories, and Explanatory Narrative in History, in Philosophical Quarterly(1954), pp. 15-27. in CharlesFrankel,Explanation and Interpretation History, in Gardiner, Theories. PatrickGardiner,TheNature ofHistorical Explanation, London, 1952. Michael Scriven, Truisms as the Groundsfor Historical Explanation, in Gardiner, Theories. W. H. Walsh, TheIntelligibilityof History, in Philosophy (1942), pp. 129-43. Mendel supports Hempel's thesis, and in rejectingthe arguments presentedby the latter's opponents he shows that the conditionsof history that are alleged to stand in the way of a scientific methodology-e.g. the uniqueness of historical events, the elusiveness of causal laws-obtain in science as well. Indeed the following arguments are not intendedto support the doctrine that history is sui generis in its methods.But then the general conclusion must be that "it is desirable to dispense with a nomenclatureattached to an outdated philosophy of science, namely that asserting the coextensivenessof science and causality" (Bunge, op. cit., p. 277). This is to say that the identificationof all knowledge as causal is as unsatisfactoryin science as it is in history.

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but as causal explanation it can, in most cases, hope to rely only on the thin paste of post hoc ergo propter hoc. in Another form of explanationfrequentlyencountered music history is that in which an individual work is identifiedwith a class or type about which some general characteristicis alleged. As an example we may take the following sentence:"Four-partwriting was of course no novelty c. 1300...; but its appearancein severalEnglish compositions..., when considered together with the attemptat six-partwriting in Sumer is icumen in...seems to show a predilectionon the part of the English for greater fullness of sound..."14 Associations of this type increase our of understandingparticulars.As soon as we are able to say that power the particular in questionis a such-and-such, have taken hold of it. we But we have by no means given a causal explanation of it. Among the criticismsthat have been raised against Hempel's thesis, some do not questionthe historian's interestin causes, but nevertheless deny both the possibility of collecting enough information about the circumstancesunder which his events took place and the possibility of formulating satisfactory general laws.'5 With respect to conditions, in order to make a scientificexplanation of Napoleon's decision to invade Russia the historian would need to know far more about the Emperor's public and private life than he could ever hope to learn (more, no doubt, than Napoleon himself knew). And with respectto laws in history, they must be of such generality as to be trivial, or of such specificityas to apply to only a single case. We may take as an example the statement"Louis XIV was unpopular because his policy was detrimentalto France."16 general law The on which this explanation rests might take this unimpressive form: "Rulers whose policies are detrimentalto their countries become unpopular." Or we might fill out the statementof the law with a complex of factors including Louis's expansionist foreign policy, his heavy taxation, and his religious persecutions. But as it gains in explanatory power it narrows in its applicability,until the conditions it specifies are met only by the case of Louis XIV. Then it might resemble general laws in form, but it would be, in fact, an explication of the particular
"4From GustaveReese,Music in theMiddleAges, New York, 1940, p. 403. "This is Donagan's thesis, although most critics express the same concern in one form or another. " The exampleis from Dray, Laws and Explanations,p. 39 ff.

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case. And herein lies the thrust of an altogether differentnotion of explanation.17In this view the explanations that satisfy historians are indeed explications, detailedunfoldings of the case under consideration, in the context of all that can be discovered about the attendant circumstances. These may be related through an interpretative transformation of facts, so that they manifesta recognizable pattern or theme. In this view explaining is a kind of ordering process, like explaining the functioningof a sentence.To be sure, somewherein the background there are ultimate regularitiesand correlationson which it all depends, but they are of an extremely general and fundamental sort, like the broadest generalizations about human behavior. It is not from these that the explanation derives its power. It is, rather, from the coherence of the pattern that the historian has recognized. He is credited,not with discovering that a particular phenomenon falls under a general law, but for finding that a number of elements may be brought together into a single pattern in such a way as to be made intelligible in terms of one another. This view rejectsthe ultimate artificiality,the belief in the separability in practice of observation and theory--as Taine had it, "Apres la collectiondes faits, la recherchedes causes."'8 These criticisms are made on logical grounds and from reflection about what historians in fact do. Others stem from consideration, not of the truth, but of the usefulness of the covering law hypothesis. It is useful to the pure scientist,for he is principally interestedin the laws themselves; he values them for the fact that they explain. It is useful to the applied scientist, for his chief business is making predictions. And it is useful to the geologist, say, or to the musicologist working with his evidence, for both are concernedin reasoning from present evidence through laws to past facts. But none of these statementsdescribes the principal purpose of the historian writingnarrative history, for his objective is to establish connections among facts of which he is already in possession.19 The question of value may be approached from still another direction. The covering law hypothesis, and indeed the general movement
"Walsh, Child, Butterfield,Dray, Explaining What; (Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation, Chap. 2. "'Quotedby Croce, p. 239. As an antidoteto Taine's maxim I refer the reader to Norwood Hanson's Patternsof Discovery, CambridgeUniv. Press, 1958. "Child, p. 665; Butterfield, 22; Frankel,p. 411. p.

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towards "scientific" procedure in historical studies of which that hypothesis is a late and quintessentialmanifestation,answereda pressing need. It was the need to bring to light the assumptions that are, as Hempel wrote, "buried under the gravestones 'hence', 'therefore','because', and the like," and to erect a standard against which it would be possible to show that explanations thus offered are often "poorly founded or downright unacceptable."20 was to affirm that the reIt sponsibility for logical, deductive reasoning, to the limits of the evidence, was not to be circumvented recourseto "intuitive conviction" by and "historical sensitivity." I believe that Hempel's argument is best interpretedin that light, and not as a demand for strict adherenceto the letter of the covering law model. For Hempel himself recognized the impossibility of meeting such a demand in history; thus he spoke of "explanation sketches," as others have spoken of "loose laws" and "probability hypotheses."2lWith this interpretation,then, the covering law model is but a maximal formulation for the sort of reasoning to which the historian is obligated, and for his recognition that events are orderly rather than capricious. The need for such an orientation is hardly to be denied. It is in the leap from that emphasis to the central placementof causal knowledge in historical inquiry that the difficulties to be located! are And now I have returnedto my principal subject. For it seems to me that in the practice of musicology the explaining "what" has been heavily prejudiced by a preoccupation with explaining "why." The historian's account of what the work is, is conditioned by his habit of inquiring how it came to be. This is the second "historical point of view." The historical fact is understood principally through its antecedents and consequences,and the sequenceof historicalfacts is linked in a geneological chain of cause and effect.This view is supported, as we have seen, by the Neo-Positivist approach to explanation. But it is also reinforced by a number of inheritedbeliefs about the nature of historical change and historical necessity that come, paradoxically, from anotherdirectionaltogether.It is to those that I turn now. We may begin by considering Guido Adler'spropaedeuticpostulate "The task for musicology, given in his Methode der Musikgeschichte:
20 p. cit.

21 Dray, Laws and Explanation,pp. 25-31.

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of music history is the investigationand thesetting forth of the developThe mental paths of music."22 ShorterOxfordEnglish Dictionary offers two families of meaning for the word "develop"; as technical term in mathematics,photography, and warfare,and then this group: "To unfold or unroll, to unfurl, to unveil, to disclose, to bring out all that is contained in, to bring forth from a latent or elementarycondition, to cause to grow what exists in the germ, to grow into a fuller, higher, or more mature condition." These definitionshave in common the notion, either of disclosure of what is already present, or of realization of a stored potential. In either case a process is suggested for which the course is charted, and the end-point determined.Now the context for these definitionsis largely biological, and we shall probably object that no such deterministideas underlie our notions of developmentin history. Yet in the history of art, and in political and social history, thereis a strong traditionfor just such a concept. It goes back, in any case, to Aristotle. He wrote, in the Physics, "Those things are natural which by a continuousmovement originated by an internal principle arrive at some completion" and "Each step in the series is for the sake of the next." In the Poetics he wrote, of the development of tragedy, "It was in fact only after a long series of changes that the movement of Tragedy stopped on its attaining to its natural form."23 From Leo Schrade's essay Renaissance,the Historical Conceptionof an Epoch,24we learn of the scheme of cultural developmentin terms of which the men of the 15th and 16th centuriessaw their age. Writers in all disciplines rejoiced in their participation in a "restoration," "renovation," "return to the light," "rebirth."The original, or model, was, of course, antiquity, in some versions together with the early Christian era. The two epochs--the original and the rebirth--had been separated by an "immense interval," a "lacuna," an "exile," an "abyss," a "dark ignorance," or "middle age." The rebirth was followed by a period of growth that, as Schrade observed, "stimulated the assumption of the biologic process of passing through the phases of infancy or youth, maturemanhood, and old age. It seems but natu1919, p. 9. 22Leipzig, "Quoted from the Oxfordtranslation,editedby W. D. Ross. Physics: Bk. II, Ch. 8, p. 199b, 11. 15-19; p. 199a, 11. 15-16. Poetics: Ch. 4, p. 1449a, 11. 14-15. 24 International Musicological Society, Report of the 5th Congress, Utrecht,1952, Kassel, 1953, pp. 19-32.

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ral that the biological idea of an organic growth toward fullest ripeness suggested the principles of progressiveness and perfectionto the summitof potentialities." This schemeof history again held a centralposition in the self image of 18th-centuryartists and scholars. Immanuel Kant wrote in 1784:
All the capacities implanted in a creatureby nature are destinedto unfold themselves, completely and conformably to their end, in the course of time...In man, as the only rational creatureon earth, those natural capacities which are directedtoward the use of his reason could be completelydeveloped only in the species and not in the individual, for reason requiresthe productionof an almost inconceivableseries of generations in order that Nature's germs, as implanted in our species, may be at last unfolded to that stage of development which is completelyconformableto her inherentdesign.2

(Hegel, not long after, took the same doctrine, and nearly the same language, as a centraltenetof his philosophyof history: "The principle of development involves the existence of a latent germ of being-a In capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself.")26 a work begun also in 1784, Johann GottfriedHerder put it this way: "As a botanist cannot obtain a completeknowledgeof a plant unless he follow it from the seed through its germination, blossoming, and decay, such is Grecian history to us."27That this doctrine should find expression within the context of a discussion of Greekcivilizationis, of course, especially meaningful. For once again that civilization, at its height, represented to the men of the second half of the 18th century a perfection,a standard that was to be emulated. All this is explicit in the work of the influentialarcheologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In his monumental History of Ancient Art, published 1764, he distinguishedthree stages: "The arts which are dependent on drawing have, like all inventions, commenced with the necessary; the next object of research was beauty; and finally the superfluous followed." Here is his summary of the course of Greek art:
The'earliestattempts,especially in the drawing of figures, represented,not the manner in which a man appears to us, but what he is; not a view of his body, but the
2Kant, Idea of a UniversalHistoryfrom a CosmopolitanPoint of View,reprintedfrom the translationof W. Hastie in Gardiner,Theories,pp. 22-34. 'Hegel, Lectureson the Philosophy of History, excerptedin J. Ioewenberg, ed., Hegel Selections, New York, 1929, p. 409. "Ideas Toward a Philosophy of the History o/Man, reprintedfrom the translation of T. Churchillin Gardiner,Theories,pp. 35-51.

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outline of his shadow. From this simplicity of shape the artist next proceeded to examine proportions. This inquiry taught exactness (and) gave confidence and success to his endeavours after grandeur, and at last gradually raised art among the Greeks to the highest beauty. After all the parts constituting grandeur and beauty were united, the artist, in seeking to embellish them, fell into the error of profuseness; art consequently lost its grandeur, and the loss was finally followed by its utter downfall.28

This evaluation is important, for it shows that "dread of corruption," as Gombrichrecentlytermedit,29 through whichthe new "classicism" of the 18th century was to be purified. It implied an appeal for the perpetuation of ideal forms that Winckelmannhad already made explicit in his Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture,published in 1755.30The economy and incisiveness that are asked for here became and have remained, as we know, synonymous with both the notion of"perfection"and the concept "Classical." Just as our conception of the "Renaissance" as a historical epoch follows, and continues to reinforce,the self image of Renaissance men, so our continued designation of the second half of the 18th century as the era of "Classicism"rests ultimatelyupon, and preserves, ideals that were given expression at the time. And a single view of history-the developmentalview -underlies both cases. The active role that this theory of history plays in the practice of musicology is most apparent in textbooks of music history, although these do not by any means constitute its only sphere of influence. I shall cite a characteristicpassage, and let it evoke others like it. And by way of preface to all the quotations that follow, I should like to make it quite clear that it is not my purpose to take issue with them or their authors directly, but rather to relate them to a framework of theory. Here, then, is a passage from a widely read introductorytextbook: "When Emma's spectral funeral music...announcedin its transformation at the end of the opera [Euryanthe] that the sinner is redeemed, the seed was planted from which, at Wagner's hands, the whole form of Music Drama was to grow."3'We may read this sort of language
28Thequotationsare from the translationof G. Henry Lodge, Boston, 1873, pp. 191-92. 29Public lecture,Philosophiesof History and theirImpact on Art, I. Platonism and the Dread of Corrupton. Universityof Chicago, 1966. 0Gedankenfiber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werkein der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, available to me in the editionof B. Seuffert,Heilbronn, 1855. 3"Alfred Einstein, A Short History of Music, 4th Americaned., revised, New York, 1956, p. 164.

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as literary gift wrapping, enclosing less theoreticalmeaning than appears on the surface. But then here is a less picturesquestatementby a different author which is, nevertheless,informed by the same doctrine: "Instrumentalmusic in the early 17th centurywas in a different stage of developmentfrom vocal music. Vocal music had to assimilate the new technique of monody...; but instrumentalmusic for the most part had only to continuealong thepaththat had already been marked out before.the end of the Renaissance."32 Here is the same view again, expressed in one of our most recenttextbooks of history, and this time stated quite explicitly as theory: "Musical materials have to be 'used up', their potential fully exploited, beforestyle can move ahead on the long line of history. As in a developmentsection by Beethoven, the material already introducedhas to be shreddeddown to its constituent fibers, all its meaning extracted, before new meaning will seem meaningful. "33

There can be no questionthat the developmentaldoctrine is a prominent feature in the philosophicalbackgroundof historicalmusicology. Before asking how it manifestsitselfin the evaluation of musical works I shall need to make one final digression. The concept of historical developmentfalls squarely in the field of a fundamental and recurringphilosophical controversy, that between the positions of "Nominalism" and "Realism." To the Nominalist, categories of particulars are constructs:artificial, arbitrary, and practical. The general terms by which we designate them are names only, and the study of categoriesamounts to the study of the linguistic rules that govern the use of the terms that representthem. For the Realist particulars are grouped togetherbecause of propertiesheld in common, and general terms derive their meanings from the real features of the objectsto whichthey refer- not the other way about. For the Nominalist categories are hypothetical and are valued for their usefulness in the management of data. For the Realist the common features of particulars by whichthey are set off in categories are independently"true" and are to be discovered. Whethera particular belongs to a certain category is for the Nominalist a formal question of definition, of the use of the terms in the case, but not so for the Realist.
Music, New York, 1960, p. 297. 3Donald Jay Grout,A History of Western
"Richard Crocker, A History of Musical Style, New York, 1966, p. 525.

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For a concrete example from music history of the approach to a single problem from these opposed points of view we may consider the controversy over the status of the concept"Baroque." The Nominalist position was representedby John Mueller in his essay, characteristically entitled Baroque-Is it Datum, Hypothesis, or Tautology?34 In

answering the rhetorical question of his title Mueller treated the stylecategory "Baroque" as an invention of historians, therebydenying the first of his alternatives, and then challenged its soundness because, he argued, the integrity of the category could not be demonstrated.But Manfred Bukofzer claimed for the Baroque the status of "period in its own right"--not a construct, but a collection of real attributes.35 In the following statement by Paul Henry Lang the Realist position is taken a step further, in that the particulars belonging to the category owe their characteristicsto the circumstanceof theirhaving been born into the category: "The Baroque stands vividly beforeus for its power to mold all the arts accordingto its own eloquent spirit."36 Here "Bais no longer a designation for the common attributesof Baroque" roque art-works; it denotes a distillation of these attributesin ideal form, a generative principle, an essence. Baroque works are no longer particulars that share certain properties;they are individual embodiments of a single essence. In the light of that distinction Karl Popper has introduced the term "Essentialism" for this extremeform of the Realist doctrine.37 The historical theory in which the causes of events are sought in developmental processes is an Essentialist theory. For at the core of each process of development-whether it is of a genre, of a school, or of a technique--there must be somethingthat is recognizably the same even while it changes with respect to its outer form. We affirm this in our willingness to name what it is that is undergoing development"music drama" and "instrumental music," in the textbook passages that I cited above. Those names refer to essences or universals, and to trace the developmentof such genres is to follow the successive embodiments of their essences. But the study of individual embodiments
and Art Criticism,XII (1954), 421-37. 4Journalof Aethetics 152-56.
35The Baroque in Music History, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XIV (1955),

3Music in Western Civilization,New York, 1941, p. 529.

ThePovertyof Historicism,3d ed., New York, 1961, pp. 26-34.

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is undertaken as means, not as end, for they reveal the different forms that the essence may take; i.e. they reveal its potentials. Indeed, an essence may be regarded as the sum of its potential forms, and to really know an essence we must follow it through all of those forms. This is the sense, once again, of Herder's figure: "The botanist cannot obtain a complete knowledge of a plant unless he follow it from the seed through its germination, blossoming, and decay." From this point of view the study of anything is necessarily historical. Goethe warned once: "Too much inquiring after thesources of things is dangerous. We should rather concentrate on phenomena as given realities."38 What a curious and unexpected thing it is that an Idealist one that arises from a knowledge is historical"-and position-"All Positivist orientation-"All knowledge is causal knowledge"-should come together in the doctrine of historicism that is the antithesis of Goethe's meaning! We can anticipate three characteristics in the approach to the musical work from the developmental point of view. It will be regarded as the embodiment of an essence; it will be understood in terms of its antecedents and consequences; and it will be seen in the context of a process that culminates in the fulfillment or perfection of the essence that it informs. The following selections of music-historical writing are all taken from a single field of inquiry, the study of music of the Classic era. This is done in the interest of maintaining a consistent framework, not because that field is unique in its theoretical bearing. And this time I quote, not from general textbooks but from scholarly publications intended for a professional audience. First, passages from an article on The Symphonies of Padre Martini39(the title is significant, for its form suggests that the author means to give a general account of his repertory). Martini's works are repeatedly considered in terms of their embodiment of the Baroque and Classic styles. Thus, "The first book of Sonatas marked Martini's farewell to the Baroque," and "The Symphony 2 illustrates Martini's approach to the new [i.e. Classic] style." In the following passages the evaluation of musical works depends upon a comparison with past
38"Allzuvieles Fragen nach den Ursachen sei gefahrlich;man solle lieber an die Erscheinungen als gegebene Tatsache halten." Quoted by H. J. Moser in Zur Methodik der musikalischen in Aesthetik,XIV (1920), 130-45. Geschichtschreibung, Zeltschrzftfur 9By Howard Brofsky, in TheMusical Quarterly,LI(1965), 649-73.

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and/or future counterparts: the slow movement of Symphony 22 is "retrospective, for it begins with the Baroque chromatic descending tetrachord in the bass," and "Oddly enough, Martini reverts in the late symphonies to the descending chromatic tetrachord," or "Martini disappoints us, for while the symphony dated 1736 is au courant with the conventions of the day his later stylistic progress is small, and does not keep pace with the important changes taking place around him." Finally, in the polarity of a "nascent Classical style" on one hand, and a "full-fledged Classical style" on the other, we have the familiar image of birth and development to maturity. Next I quote passages from an encyclopedia article on the symphony.40 Regarding the music of Florian Gassmann, "his orchestral treatment...points to the future," and that of Mozart, "Although Mozart did not consciously seek new and surprising effects, he was a pioneer with respect to the greater independence of the winds." "Massoneau's Symphonie la Tempete et la Calme (1794) may be regarded as preparing the way for the Pastoral Symphony." These passages, again, make their reports in terms of past and future. Characteristic too is the tendency to make no distinction between forerunner and progenitor, i.e. to require no further evidence that forerunner is progenitor. This tendency seems always to carry with it the attributing of the greatest significance to the earliest occurrence of a phenomenon or trait. The growth image is projected in this passage: "In the early years of the [18th] century the overture is important as the cradle of the new Classic tone language...With composers of the first generation the sonata form of the first movement is only rudimentary...The second generation of overture composers shows greater mastery of sonata form." In this last passage, too, it must be plain that "sonata form" is an ideal, an essence. For how is it otherwise possible to speak in terms of degrees of mastery of a technique that has nowhere yet been fully defined or worked out? Of course we know the experience of the conscious quest for the solution of an intellectual or artistic problem. We are unable to specify the solution while we seek it, but we recognize it once it is presented to us. What I wish to observe here is the tendency to assume such a structure for all historical processes, and to derive from it every judgment about works of art. There is an apparent difference between these last quotations and the passages about Padre Martini. Those were phrased in a heavily valuearticleSymphonie. 40MGG,

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laden language; these seem objective and noncommittal. We might say that the first are interpretative, the second descriptive. But herein lies an issue of the first importance. The single criterion of value for the interpretative statements is the same developmental framework that gives form to the descriptive statements. The question is whether a descriptive statement on these lines can ever be bare of value connotations. Can we say "ripe Classical style" without implying a higher order of musical achievement than is suggested by "nascent Classical style"? Surely not, for all statements of this type are supported by a theory of history that imposes a hierarchy on their subjects. Every stage in a developmental process is a step nearer to the realization of potentials, hence what is is an improvement over what was. That is the spirit in which Hegel could write "The real world is as it ought to be" (italics mine).41 The only difference between the passages on Martini and those on the symphony is in the degree to which their assessments are made explicit. Let us return to the encyclopedia article: in the treatment of Philipp Emanuel Bach the interpenetration of historical position and artistic position is complete:
Although he was among the most respected and influential personalities of the 18th century both as theoretician and composer, he did not always succeed in coordinating all the musical factors in the full Classical sense...A conflict arises from Bach's breadth of background in the traditions of the past, which is coupled with a striking futuristic tendency. He combined Baroque, Classic, and Romantic characteristics in a mixture that rarely resulted in a satisfying synthesis. In Bach's symphonies sensitive and striking details often interrupt the flow and balance of the over-all conception, which is evidence of the basic opposition between Empfindsamkeit and ripe Classicism.

The assessment of the man's position as an artist is truly indistinguishable from his location on the historical continuum. If his music is unsuccessful, it is because he occupies an awkward position historically. (We know of other composers, of course, whose mark of artistic achievement is their position not between, but in advance of, scheduled historical developments.
)42
4Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. from the 3d German ed. by J. Sibree, London, 1894. The passage quoted is from the author's introduction.

42Oswald Spengler marked the beginningof the declineof Westernmusic with Beethoven,on profusion and the consequentdisruptionof grounds very like those laid down by Winckelmann: form. AlfredEinsteinargued that,on thecontrary,Beethovenrepresentsa peak in that he brought about the full realization of the potentialsof sonata form. They assess their man differently,but positions in theirrespectiveschemes of development.(Spengler, only because he occupiesdifferent The Decline of the West,authorizedtransl. by Charles F. Atkinson, New York, 1926 and 1928, in fur I, 291 ff.; Einstein, Oswald Spengler und die Alusikgeschichte, Zeitschrift MusikwissenIII[1920], 30-32.) schapft,

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Finally I quote from a monograph on The Symphonies ofJoseph Haydn.4 Once again, measurementis taken in terms of the past and future: "Thus, the Salomon Symphonies sum up and synthesize all [Haydn] has achieved in the field, and at the same time look far forward into the future, to the orchestral world of Beethoven and Schubert, of Mendelssohn and Schumann."44Defined goals are achieved through a gradual development:"The first six [Salomon Symphonies] show a steady progress in the directionof the 'English Taste'."45And what lies at the end of the developmentis the perfectionof the form, the full realization of its potentials;"last" is "best": "As the London period progresses, this tendency[ i.e. the dramaticfunctionof the slow introduction]emerges ever more clearly, and by 1794-95 [ Symphonies 102-104] the formal and emotional necessity of the introductoryslow sections is quite apparent. In no. 104 the profundity of the introduction reaches its height."4 Giventhe now familiar theoreticalframework we might have anticipatedthat judgment, if not its paradoxical wording. In this philosophy art is a collective,impersonalenterprise;tracings of the passage of time, now more, now less distinct, now leading, now trailing behind. Art works are but manifestationsof an Idea, like the shadows in Plato's cave, whose value is measuredby the closeness with which they approximate their models, and whose necessities are imposed from without. In our quest for the sources of art we neglect its quality. We do so to the disadvantage of our faculty for judging art works, for our standards of judgment have little to do with the ways in which we apprehend works. Then we are left with a history in which esthetics and hermeneuticsplay no significant part. But it may yet be that the same obsession with causality that yields such a curiously one-sided history is responsible also for distortions in the narrative for which so much is sacrificed; that our categorical prejudgmentseffectnot only the interpretation and assessment of art works, but even those matters that we take to be open to "objective,""scientific"treatment:the reading of art works and the attributionof authorship,chronology, and provenance. That is a questionfor furtherinquiry.

43ByH. C. Robbins Landon,London, 1955. 44Ibid.,p. 552.

'6Ibid.,p. 573.