[412] Both Mendelssohn and Schumann deplored the fact that they could get no really good libretto and would unquestionably not have received all the statements here without considerable qualification. Hegel appears to be too dominated by the character of Italian opera. German opera as further developed by Wagner and even in the hands of Beethoven and Glück and Weber makes a very different demand. It is unquestionably true that there must be a certain reciprocity of quality between the two. But some of the finest music has been written for some of the finest poetical language, namely that of our Bible. Composers like Bach, Handel, and S. S. Wesley insisted on having the very best form of their religious ideas they could obtain.
[413] Lit., "Within the purely musical realm of tones." Hegel's strictures would only apply to the most formal kind of exercises or studies. It would really be a misnomer to say that Chopin's studies for the piano or Spohr's or even Kreutzer's exercises for the violin wholly come under it.
[414] It is on this ground that Aristotle calls music the most imitative art. They represent emotions directly without the mediatory office of Nature's objectivity (vide "Three Lectures on Aesthetic," by Bernard Bosanquet, p. 53).
[415] It is more subjective because the content is more ideal, and more closely related to the artist's personal qualities.
[416] More definite than feeling and soul-life is from tone.
[417] That is, vanishes with the evanescence of the music.
[418] Die Geschicklichkeit eines virtuosen Machwerks. Machwerk is used, of course, in a depreciating sense. The contrast is between it and a truly inspired composition.
[419] Lit., "Of the business on hand."
[420] Gleichgültig. I am not sure whether Hegel means fortuitous in the sense that Nature in its abstraction is such, or purely objective, i.e., no self-reflection, probably the latter. They are "dead elements."
[421] That is, spatial externality.