music, freedom, and metaphysics 181is also an intentional phenomenon. It cannot, moreover, be properly
grasped without taking into account both its somatic and its affective
significance for those engaged with it. Schlegel and the Schelling of the
Philosophy of Artcharacterised rhythm in terms of its ordering of the feel-
ing of chaos or meaninglessness that emerges with thought’s ability to
transcend immersion in immediate particularity. However, this means
of establishing order can also take people into an ecstatic state, akin to
madness, which is part of what Schelling means by the ‘rule-less’.^14 The
kind of identity involved in rhythm’s being both a means of escaping
order and of establishing it is precisely what interests Schelling and is
vital to an adequate understanding of music.^15 It follows from his con-
ception that the subject’s need to come to terms with the contradictions
in its existence can be provided for by music’s capacity both to evoke
and to structure powerful feelings. Music can therefore be the source
both of disruption of feelings and of a possible response to that dis-
ruption. The greatest modern music can evoke feelings whose extreme
nature takes them close to madness, but at the same time it uses what
can give rise to those feelings to create new kinds of order which may in
some cases protect the subject from falling into dangerous psychologi-
cal states. The fascination of Wagner lies in his ambivalent status in this
respect: does his music threaten psychological stability, or help sustain
it in a deeper way by articulating what is often repressed?
Music’s ambivalent status in modernity, where it is regarded both
as a resource and as a danger, has to do with the dualities suggested
by Schelling’s attempts to understand how freedom is part of a nature
which is also thoroughly determined by natural laws. Martin Geck says
of Beethoven that, for him, ‘art is on the one hand a chance to “expe-
rience” life without becoming hardened, on the other it fixes attitudes
which are an obstacle to the direct enjoyment of life. It is not only
Beethoven who experiences art in this dialectic – it isthebourgeois
problematic of art’ (Geck 2000 : 8 ). The development of modern music
involves moves between extremes of order and the disruption of order.
However, what is regarded as belonging to the extremes can change:14 In a letter to Carl Fuchs in 1888 Nietzsche comments that ‘Our [modern] rhythm is a
means of expression of affect: ancient rhythm, time-rhythm, has, in contrast, the task of
dominating affect and eliminating it to a certain degree... In the ancient understanding
rhythm is morally and aesthetically the reins which are put on passion. In short: our kind
of rhythm belongs to pathology, the ancient to “ethos”’ (Nietzsche 2000 : 3 , 1314 ).
15 In the Conclusion I cite Daniel Barenboim’s comment that music, which ‘is so clearly
able to teach you so many things’, is also able to ‘serve as a means of escape from precisely
those things’ (Barenboim and Said 2004 : 122 ).