music and romanticism 161nothing but the external representation of the infinity of relationships
in self-consciousness, but not at all such that there would be a deter-
minate correspondence between particulars in one and in the other’
(ibid.: 394 ). Just as understanding language depends on historical and
psychological contexts for the relationship of particulars in language
to particulars in the world to be intelligible, different cultures involve
differing relationships between the ways in which consciousness moves
and the forms which are used to articulate such movement. This means
that music can be understood as achieving degrees of completion: ‘the
more completely... the mobility of the whole of human life appears
in the whole multiplicity and sequence of notes, the more the idea of
music is achieved’ (ibid.: 395 ). Whether this remark points to what can
really count as a universal phenomenon can be questioned, but it does
illuminate the development of Western music in his period towards the
attempt to encompass human being in the world ever more completely.
Think of the difference between the symphonies of the Mannheim
School and what becomes of the symphony by the time of Mahler.
Schleiermacher’s position is no doubt questionable in certain
respects, but what makes it important is suggested by the following:
If we once more consider how one so easily one-sidedly presupposes that
the very direction of the individual towards communication is a verbal
one (‘eine logische’), and yet must admit that all musical representation
only really has a minimum of verbal content, then a powerful refutation
of this assertion lies in this fact, and it follows that there must be a massive
intensity in this direction of the human mind to be able to represent itself
purely in its mobility, apart from everything verbal (‘abgesehen von allem
Logischen’).
(ibid.: 399 – 400 )Schleiermacher sees this ‘direction of the mind’ as an anthropologi-
cal given, albeit one which differs in degree with regard to its effects
on particular cultures, but it also has to do with the modern develop-
ment in which music takes on a new status because of changes in the
understanding of language (and vice versa).
How, then, can one make more precise sense of the notion of the
‘movements of self-consciousness’ in relation to music? Schleiermacher
wishes to distinguish between what can be articulated as propositional
knowledge, and what must be articulated or shown in some other man-
ner. The former fixes what would otherwise pass away or remain indeter-
minate, the latter has to do precisely with the fact that individual human