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Kant Elaborates On This Difference By Stating, ‘the Beautiful Is Directly ...

Kant elaborates on this difference by stating,
‘The beautiful is directly attended with a feeling of the furtherance of life, and is thus compatible with charms and playful imagination. On the other hand, the feeling of the sublime is a pleasure that only arises indirectly, being brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport, but dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination. Hence, charms are repugnant to it; and, since the mind is not simply attracted by the object, but is also alternatively repelled thereby, the delight in the sublime does not so much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect, i.e. merit's the name of negative respect.' (Kant, 1973, p.91)
From this we can see that the musician's role is that of the creator of greatness itself. Devoid of formal representation, the emphasis of Kant's critique of the sublime places the essence of greatness upon that, which lies beneath that of the ordinary or outside of the limitations of preconceptions and expectations apparent in the mind. Instead, he believed that through a limitless imagination the enormity of nature that inhabits our environment could be captured and represented through the feeling of music. Essentially, Kant believed that through the totality of representation made possible through the sublime, greatness could be captured in a momentary glance that begins a process into the mind of the listener that is not bound to bland agreeableness, understanding and sentiment but to reason and pleasure. This was the premise for the musical approach that came to prominence during the romantic period. This relationship between the expression of the musical object and the manipulation of the limitations of the minds interpretation of acoustics became the main concern in western culture. During the romantic period, the striving for the charms and playful limitations of beauty soon gave way, as Kant had suggested, to the quest for the limitless and formless greatness of representing feeling that the natural environment concealed.

Impressionism and the Shift From Romantic Idealism

The impressionist movement within music began as a genre in European classical music and had its origins in the late nineteenth century. However, it continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Unlike the philosophical enquiries of the enlightenment period, impressionism, like its precursor in the visual arts, rejected the notion of depicting the vastness that lies behind experience and instead moved towards suggestion. Musical Impressionism occurred as a reaction to the excesses of the Romantic era that had been born from the notion of the sublime and greatness.

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