Herbert Schueller, Schelling's Philosophy of Art Forms of Art Music

8/13/2019 Herbert Schueller, Schelling's Philosophy of Art Forms of Art Music

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Constructionof the Formsof Artin the Juxtapositionof the Realand IdealSeries

The immediately preceding proposition proved that each o f the two primal form sin itself differentiates itself ever anew intoall other forms. Expressedinanotherway: each of the two primal forms takes up all other forms or unities as potenceand makes them into its symbol or particular. This will be presupposed here.

The Real Side of the Worldof Art; or Formative Art76. The indifference of the informing of the infinite into thefinite taken purelyas indifference, is sonority O r , within the informing of the infinite into thefinite, indifference as indifference can emerge only as sonori ty.

This is clarified in the following way. The implantation of the in finite into thefinite as such expresses itself in matter (this is the common unity) through thefirst dimension, or through that whereby it (as difference) is self-identical (indif-ference). That first dimension in matter, however, is not posited purely as such,but rather simultaneously with the second, and accordingly synthesized throughthe third. Thus the informing of the infinite into the finite cannot represent itselfpurely as such within the actual being of matter. This is the negative side of theproof. That it is sonori ty , however, through which the indifference within theimplantation of the infinite into the finite purely as such expresses itself, can beseen from the following.

(1) The act of implantation itself is expressed in corporeal reality as m agne-tism (this proof is found in the Philosophy ofNature).2Yetm agnetism is itselfbound to the particular body, as is the first dimension, and is thus not the inform-

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Annotation 3.W e must add to this view of sonority that of the s e n s e ofh e a r-ing.The root of the sense ofhearing resides within anorganic n ature, w ithin mag-netism. The hearing organ itself is merely magnetism that has developed toorganic perfection. Nature integrates universally within organic nature the anor-ganic through its opposite unity. The la t terthe anorganic un i tyis merely theelement of the infinite within the finite. This is, for example, sonority or reso-nance. Integrated with its opposite itbecomes = sense of hearing. The hearingorgan consistsexternally of rigid andsonorous bodies, except that the antitheticalunity of the reassumption of difference within resonance into indifference iscombined with this first unity.The body that wecall dead possessesthe one unityfrom hearing, and now lacks only the other.

77. The ar tform inwhich there a lunity purely as s u c h b e c o m e s po t e n c e andsymbol ismusic This follows directly from the two preceding propositions.Annotation. The nature of music can be determined from various perspec-

tives. The construction given here, however, is that issuing from our earlier fun-damental principles. The various other determinations of music issue as imme-diateconclusions from this one.

Corol lary proposit ion 1. Music as art is originally attributed to the f i rs td imens ion (it has only one dimension).

Corol larypr oposi t ion2.The necessary form of music is succes s ion, for timeis the universal form of the informing of the infinite into the finite and to thatextent is intuited as form, abstracted from the real. The principle of time withinthe subject is self-consciousness, which is precisely the informing, within theideal,of the unity of consciousness into multiplicity. This also enables us to com-prehend better the close relationship between the sense of hearing in general andmusicandspeech inparticular with self-consciousness. Italso enables us tocom-prehend in a preliminary fashionuntil we have demonstrated its even highersignificance the arithmetical side of music. Music is the real self-numbering ofthe soulPythagoras already compared the soul to a number yet for preciselythat reason it is also an unconscious, self-forgetting numbering or counting.Hence, Leibniz could say: Musica es t raptus numerare se nescient i sanimae?(The other determination of the character of music can be developed only withinits relationship to the other arts.)

78.Musicas theform inwhichtherea l unity beco m esits owns y m b o l e n c o m -passes necessar i ly all other unit ies within itself, for the real unity takes its l(within art as potence merely in order to represent itself, through itself, abso-lutely as form. Each unity in its ownabsoluteness, however, encompasses allothers as well; hence, music also encompasses all others.

79. Within m usic itself, that particular informing of unity intom ultiplicity, aninforming that is itself e n c o m p a s s e d as aparticular unityin this c ase the re a lunityis rh y t h m .

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If for the sake of this proof I may employ the most general concept of rhythm,then rhythm inthissense isnothing more than the periodicsubdivisionof homo-geneity whereby the uniformity of the latter is combined with variety and thusunity with m ultiplicity. For example, the emotion that a piece of music arouses asa who le is a completely homogeneous, uniform one. It is, for exam ple, cheerfulor sad. Through the various rhythmic subdivisions, however, this single feelingthat alone w ould have been com pletely homogeneous acquires variety and diver-sity. Rhythm is one of the most wonderful mysteries of nature and art, and nohuman invention appears to be more immediately or directly inspired by nature.

Theancientsroundly attributed torhythm thegreatest aesthetic power. Neithercan one easily deny that everything one can call truly beautiful in music or danceactually has to do w ith the rhythm . Inorder to comprehend rhythm most purely,however, we must separate out everything else in music that is stimulating orexciting. Tones, for example, are also significant in themselves. They can becheerful, gentle, sad, or painful. Yet when we view rhythm w e must completelyabstract from them. Its beauty is not material and it does not require the merelynatural affectations residing within tones in and for themselves in order to beabsolutely pleasing and to enchant a receptive soul.To see this more clearly,imagine first the elements of rhythm as being completely indifferent, as are, forexample, the individual tones of a string by themselves, or the beat of a drum.How can aseriesof such beats become significant, exciting, or pleasing? Beatsor tones that succeed one another without the slightest order have no effect on u s.Though these tones m ay be completely meaningless and not even m odestly pleas-ing by themselves or as simple physical sounds, as soon as they acquire regular-ity su ch that they continually recur in equal intervals and collectively cons titute aunit,we already encounter something of rhythm, albeitonly a very distant begin-n ing a nd we are irresistibly called to attendveness.The hum an being, however,driven by animpulse of nature, seeks through rhyth m to impose variety or diver-sity onto everything that in and foritself constitutes apure identity ofactivity. Inevery ac tivity that is by nature meaningless, such as counting, we do not endurelong within that uniformity. W e divide it into units. Most mechanical workersmake their work easier this way. The inner pleasure of t h a tnot really con-scious, but rather unconscious counting enables them to forget the work, andthe individual comes in at his appointed place with a kind of pleasure, since itwould pain him to see the rhythm interrupted.Until now, we have described only the most imperfect kind of rhythm, inwhich theentire unity within a particular multiplicity depends only on the uni-formity of the intervals within the sequence. An image of this might be equallylarge, equally separated points. That is the lowest level of rhythm.

A higher kind of unity within multiplicity is acquired first of all if the indi-vidual tones or beats are not sounded with equal strength, but rather alternateaccording to a certain regularity as strong and weak ones. W ith this the necessary

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elementoftactenters into rhy thm. This, too, issought wherever something iden-tical is to become different or varied, and it is capable of numerous variationsitself whereby aneven greater variety enters into the uniformity of the sequence.

In general, rhy thm is viewed as the transform ation of an essentially mean ing-less succession into a meaningful one. Succession or sequence purely as suchpossesses the character ofchance. The transform ation of the accidental na ture ofa sequence into necessity = rhythm, whereby the whole is no longer subjected totime but rather possesses time within itself. Articulation within music is theforming of units into a series such that several tones together constitute yetanother unit,one that is not accidentally or arbitrarily separated from others.This as yet m erely s implerhythm consist ing of a tonal sequence divided intounits ofequal length, each of which is disting uished perceptibly from the othercan nonetheless display a wide variety of types. For example, it can be even oruneven, and so on. Yet several tacts together can be further combined into unitsthat then constitute a higher potence of rhythm complex rhythm (in poesy: thecouplet).Finally, larger units (phrases) can bemade from these complex units (inpoesy: the stanza), and so on until this entire structure and composition stillremains comprehensible to the inner poetic sense. The final perfection ofrhythm, however, is illuminated for us by the following p ropositions.

A d d e n d u m . Rhythmis themusic wi thin m usic , for the particularity of music isbased precisely on its character as the in form ing of un ity into multiplicity. Sinceaccording to 79 rhythm isnothing m ore than this informing within music itself,it is thus the music within music, an d, according to the nature of this art form, isthe predominating feature within it.

Only if we remember this proposition will we be able to comprehend scien-tifically particularly the contrast between ancient and modern music.80. Rhythm in its comple t ed s ta t e necessar i ly encompasses the o ther unity

within itself, which in this subdivision ism odula tion (in the most general mean-ing of the term). The first part of this proposition is self-evident and can be com-prehended quite generally. Regarding the second, we need only explain whatmodulation is.The first prerequisite of rhythm is un ity w ithin mu ltiplicity. This mu ltiplicity,however, does not inhere merely in the simple difference between the various

units insofa r as they take place arbitrarily or no nessentially, that is, simply withintime, but rather insofar as they are simultaneously based on something real,essential, and qualitative. This qua lity resides only w ithin the m usical variabilityof the tones themselves. In this respect modulation is the art of maintaining theidentity of the one tone that is the predom inating one within the whole of a musi-calwork, tomaintain it in thequalitativedifference just as through rhythm itselfthe same identity is observed in the quantitative difference.

I must express myself in generalities here because modulation has somanydifferent meanings in the language of art, and I do not want any of that particular

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meaning that modulation possesses only within modern music to suggest itselfhere. That artificial method of guiding song and harmony through several tonesby means of so-called modulation an d cadences, and of finally returning to themain tone, belongs totally to the modern art of music.Since it is impossible for me to go into all these technical co nsiderations thatbelong to the theory of music and not to a general construction, you must notemerely in ge n e ra l that the two unities designated by rhythm a nd modulation areto beconceivedasquantitative and qualitative unities, respectively. The former,however, must in its own absolute state also encompass the latter such that theindependence of the latter unity from the first would necessarily suspend the firstin that absoluteness, and yields as its product a music based only on harmony.This will become clearer in the following discussion.Rhythm in this sense, that is , to the ex tent that it already e n c o m p a s s e s theother uni ty , is thus music in its entirety. This also generates for us the idea of adistinction arising from the fact that in the first case music in its entirety is sub-ordinated to the first unity, rhythm , in the second case to the second unity, mod-ulation, whereby two equally absolute yetdifferent genresof music emerge.

81. The third unity in which thef i rs t two are posi ted as equal is m e l o d y .Since this proposition is actually merely an explication, and since none willdoubt that the union of rhythm and m odulation is m e l o d y, it needs no proof. Forthe sake of illustrating the relationship among the three unities within musicitself, we wish rather to qualify them further according to different standards.

One can thus say: rhythm = first dimension, modulation = second, melody= third. The first determines or qualifies music for reflection and self-con-sciousness, the second fo r feeling and judgment, and the third fo r intuition andthe power ofimagination. W e can also see already that if the three basic forms orcategories of art are music, painting, and the plastic arts, then rhythm is themusical element within music, modulation is the element of painting (not to beconfused with m usical paint ing, which only a completely degenerate and sunkensense of taste can find good in music, such as that contemporary sensibility thatfinds edification in the bleating of the sheep in Haydn s creation music),4 andmelody is the plastic element. We can now see quite easily from the proof giveninthe preceding proposition that rhythm in this sense (namely, as encompassingthe opposite unity) and melody are themselves one and the same.

A d d e n d u m . Rhythm conce ived in absoluteness is the ent i re tyof m u s i c , or viceversa: the entirety of music is rhythm in its absoluteness, fo r rhythm directlyencompasses the other unity and constitutes melody through itself, and is thu s theentirety.

Rhythm in the larger sense is the predom inating potence in music. Insofar asthe entirety of mu sic hence rhythm, modulation, and melodymight be sub-ordinated collectively to rhythm, we have rhythm ic m usic. Such was the m usic ofantiquity. Virtually anyone can see how precisely in this construc tion all relation-



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ships and qualifications recur, and that here, too, rhythm as the informing of theinfinite into the finite resideson the side of antiquity, whereastheopposite unity,as we will see, is the predominating element of modernity.

We do not, it is true, have access to concre t e examples of the music of antiq-uity. I refer the reader to Rousseau s Dictionnaire d e Musique5 (still the mostintelligent work on this art form), where one will find how little we can think ofrendering even moderately accessible the music of antiquity by means of perfor-mance. Since the Greeks were enormously successful in all the arts, they werecertainly also successful in music. As little as we admittedly know about thatmusic, we doknow that here, too, the realistic, plastic, heroicprinciple predom-inated, and it predominated solely by subordinating everything else to rhythm.The predominating element in contemporary music is harmony, which is pre-cisely the opposite of the rhythmic m elody of an tiquity, as I will show more spe-cifically.

The only t race and a highly distorted one at tha tof the music of antiquitystill resides in the chorale.It is true, as Rousseau says, that by the time the Chris-tians began to s ing hym ns and psalms in their own churches, music had alreadylost virtually all of itsemphasis. The Christians took it as they found it, and inaddition robbed it of its most powerful energy: tempo and rhythm. Yet in thoseearly times the chorale always remained monophonic, and this is actually whatCanto Firmomeans. In later times it was always set in four voices, and the com-plex art of harmony also spread into church hymns. The Christians took musicfirst from verse and set it to the prose of the scriptures or to a totally barbaricpoesy. Thus arose that form of song that now is dragged along without tact andwith perpetually identical steps; along with its rhythmic pace it also lost all itsenergy. Only in a few hymns did one still sense the rise and fall of the verse,since the tempo of the syllables and the m eter were maintained. Yet in spite of allthese deficiencies, Rousseau, too, finds in the chorale that the priests in theRoman church have preservedin its original character, extremely valuable rem-nantsof the music of antiquity and of its various keys to the exten t it was possibleto preserve them without tact and rhythm.

82. Melody, which is the subordination of the three unit ies of music to thef irst unity, can bejuxtapose d to i ts opposite: harmony as the subordination of thethree unities to the o ther . The merely empirical theoreticians also generally rec-ognize harmony as the opposite of melody. Melody is in music the absoluteinforming of the infinite into the finite, and thus is the entire unity. Harmony issimilarly music, and to that extent is nolessthe informing of identity into dif-ference; yet this unity is symbo lized here by the opposing one the ideal unity. Incommon language usage one says of a m usician that he understands melody if hecan compose amonophonic piece distinguished by both rhythm and modulation.Similarly, he understands harmony if he also is able to lend broadness (expansionof the second dimension) to that identity that is taken up into difference within



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rhythm, and hence when he is able to unite several voices, each of which has itsownmelody, into a pleasant sounding harmonious whole. In the first case weare obviously dealing with unity within multiplicity, in the second with multi-plicity within unity;in the first case with succession, in thesecondwith coexist-ence.

Harmony also inheres in the melody, but only in subordination to rhythm (theplastic element). We are speaking here of harmony to the extent that it excludessuch subordination to rhythm, to the extent that it is itself the whole subordi-nated to the second dimension.

Harmony does indeed acquire various meanings from the various theoreti-cians, such that it may signify, for example, the union of many simultaneouslysounded tones into one single sonority. Here we are thus taking harmony in itshighest simplicity in which, for example, it is also a characteristic of an individ-ual sonority, since in the latter several tones different from it also resound, butwhich areunited so perfectly that one thinks one is hearing o nly a single tone. Ifwe now apply this same concept of mu ltiplicity within un ity to the larger un its ofan entire musical piece, then harmony consists of different tonal relationshipswithin each of these units nonetheless being brought into a unity within thewhole. Similarly, that same unity as regards the tonal piece as a whole means theresumption of all possible particular unities and of all complexities of tones notdifferent asregards rhythm, but asregardsm odulation into the absolute unityof the whole. This general concept shows us adequately that harmony is relatedto rhythm and to that extent also to melody, since melody is nothing but inte-grated r hy thm I repeat: harmon y is related to melody ju st as the ideal unity is tothe real or as the informing of multiplicity into unity is to the opposite informingof unity into multiplicity which waswhat wewanted toprove.It is important to remember here that harmony, to the extent that it is juxta-posed to melody, is in its own turn the whole and is thus the one of the twounities insofaras one reflects only on theform but not insofar as one reflects ontheessence.In the latter case h arm ony is itself ide ntity in itself an dthu s the iden-tity of all three unities, yetexpressed here in the ideal unity. Only to this extentcan harmony and melody really be juxtaposed antithetically to one another.

If one now asks about the precedence of harmon y or melody in this sense, wefind ourselves in the same situation as if one were to ask in general about theprecedence of the art of antiquity over that of modernity. If we consider theessence, then admittedly each of the two constitutes the undivided entirety ofmusic. If we consider the form , however, then our judgm ent w ill have to be thesame as that regarding the art of antiquity and mod ernity in the larger sense. Theantithesis of the two is that the form er represents in general the real, the essential,the necessary; the latter represents also the ideal, nonessential, and accidentalelementsinidentity with the essentialandnecessary. Appliedto the case athand,rhythmic music in general presents itself as an expansion of the infinite within

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thefinite such thatthe latter the finite) countsforsomething byitself,whereasinharmonic music fmitude or difference appears only as an allegory of the infiniteor of theunity.Theformer remains, onemight say, more faithful to the naturalcharacter ofmusic, whichis to be an art of succession.Hence, it is realistic. Thelatter would like to anticipate in the deeper sphere the higher ideal unity,to sus-pend the element ofsuccession from an ideal vantage point, as itwere, and por-tray the multiplicity of the moment as unity.Rhythmic music, which representstheinfinite within the finite, will be more the expression ofsatisfaction and ofvigorous passion. Harmonic music willbe morethe expression ofstrivingand ofyearning. Within the church, whose basic vision is based on the yearning andstriving o f difference backto unity,it was thus necessaryforthat elemento fcom-munal striving that actually began from each individual, a striving to view one-selfwithinthe absolute as one with everyone e lse that this striving necessarilyhad toexpress itself throughharmonic, rhythmlessmusic. Incontrast, anasso-ciation suchas that withinthe Greek s ta tesone in whicha pure collectivity, thespeciesortype itself, haddeveloped completely intoaparticular unto itself andwasthat particular had to be rhythmicin its music justas it was rhythmicin itsmanifestation as astate.

If a person does not possess a closer or more specific acquaintance withmusic, andnonethelesswishesto see the relationship between rhythmandrhyth-micmelody to harmony,let him imaginea comparison betweena playby Sopho-clesand one byShakespeare. AworkbySophoclespossessespure rhythm,andpresents only whatis necessary. It has no superfluous dimensions. Shakespeare,on the other hand,is the greatest harmonic artistand the mastero fdramatic coun-terpoint.W e arepresentednotwiththe simple rhythmof a single eventbutrathersimultaneously with its entire accompaniment and itsreflex from various sides.Compare, fo r example, Oedipus and King Lear In the former we encounternothing but the pure melody of the event. In the latter, in contrast, the fate ofLear, expelled by his daughters, is juxtaposed to the story of a son who isexpelledby his father, such thatto each individual momentof the whole anothermomentisjuxtaposed that both accompanies andreflects it.Thedifferencesin judgment concerningthe superiorityofharmonyor melodycan as little be resolved as those concerning ancient and modern art as such.Rousseau calls the formera Gothic,barbaric invention.On the other hand, therearethose who are enthusiastic about harmony who consider true music tohavecome into being only withthe inventionofcounterpoint. Sucha view,o f course,is adequately refuted by the simple fact that the ancients possessed amusicofgreat strength without any knowledge of harmony, or at least without anyemploym ent of it.Most people are of theopinion that polyphonic singing was,infact, invented only in the twelfth century.

83. Theforms ofmusicare theforms of theeternal things insofar as they areviewed f rom therealperspective for thereal sideof the eternal thingsis that side

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from which the infinite is formed into the finite. Yet this same inform ing of theinfinite into the finite is also the form of music, and since the forms of art ingeneral are the essential forms of things, the forms of music are necessarily theforms of things in themselves or of the ideas viewed completely from their realside.

Since this has been proved in the larger sense, it is also true of the particularforms of mus icof rhythm and harmony namely, that they express the formsof the eternal things insofar as the latter are viewed entirely from the perspectiveof their particularity. Furthermore, to the extent that the eternal things or theideas are revealed from the real side w ithin the cosmic bodies, the form s of musicas the forms of ideas viewed con cretely are also the forms of the being and life ofthe cosmic bodies as such; hence, music is nothing other than the perceivedrhythm and the harmony of the visible universe itself.6

Variousannotations(1) Ingeneral, philosophy, like art, is notconcernedwith things themselves,

but rather only with their forms or eternal essence. The thing itself, however, isprecisely nothing other than this particular mode or form of being, and throughthese forms one possesses the things. In its plastic works, for example, art doesnot strive tocompete with similar products of nature asregards actual concreteelements. It seeks rather the pure form, the ideal, of which the thing itself, ofcourse, is simply the other perspective. Applied to the case at hand, in rhythmand harmony music portrays the form of the movements of the cosmic bodies,the pureform as such, liberated from the object or from matter. To that extent,music is the art form that divests itself to the highest degree of corporeality byportraying pure movement as such, separated from the object, and by being car-ried by invisible, almost spiritual wings.(2) As is well known, the first advocate of this view of the heavenly move-mentsas rhythm and music was Pythagoras. It is equ ally well known , however,how little his ideas have been understood, and one can easily guess in what dis-torted form they have come down to us. People have usually understood Pytha-goras s doctrine of the music of the spheres quite crassly, namely, to the effectthat the fast movements of such large bodies must cause re sonance . Becausethese bodies rotate with different yet measured velocity and in increasinglyexpanded circles, this resonance generates a consonant harmony organizedaccording to the tonal relationships of music, such that the solar system resem-bles a seven-stringed lyre. This view takes the whole affair empirically. Pytha-goras does not say that these m ovements causem usic, but rather that they them-selves ar e music.7 This indwelling movement needed no external mediumthrough which to become music. It was m usic within itself, or inherently. Later,when people assumed that the space between the cosmic bodies was empty, or



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when at most they w ould admit only a very slight, delicate med ium to be presentthere within whichno friction could occur and no resonance elicited or transmit-ted,they believed they had done away with Pythagoras stheory, one they actuallyhad never understood. The usual explanation was that Pythagoras himself hadsaid that one could not perceive that music because of its enormous power and itscontinuity, similar to the situation of people wholive in amill. We are probablysupposed to understand this in quite the opposite fashion , namely, that people doindeedlive in amill, butthey are unable toperceive that heavenly music becauseof the physical sounds around them. Our lack of perception of this music simplyshows thisto be thecase. In Plato, Socrates says: That person is amusician whoprogresses beyond physically perceived harmonies to the suprasen sible, cerebralharmonies and theirproportions.8Philosophy still has an even greater problem to solve: the law of the numberand the distances of the plan ets. O nly then can one expect to gain insight into theinner tonal system, which until now has remained a totally closed subject. Wecan see how little our present tonal system is based o n insight and science by thefact that many intervals and types of musical progression customary withinancient music are impossible according to our divisions or even incomprehensi-ble to us.

(3)Only now can we establish the ultimate significance of r hythm , harmony,and melody. They are the first and purest forms of movement in the universe and,viewed from the real perspective, are the mode in which material thing s are equalto the ideas. The cosmic bodies float on the w ings of harmony and rhythm.9Thatwhich onecalls centripetal and centrifugal force is nothing other than harmonyand rhythm, respectively.10Elevated by the same wings, music floats in space toweave an audible universe from the transparent body of sound and tone.

The entire system of music also manifests itself in the solar system. Kepleralready attributed major tonality to the aphelion, minor tonality to the perihelion.To the various planets he attributes the d istinguishing characteristics that in musicare attributed to the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano.

Evenmore, however, we find in the solar system an expression of the cont ras tbetween melody and harmony, a contrast that appeared sequentially in art.

In the realm of planets, rhythm is the predominating element; their move-ments arepure m e l o d y . In the realm of comets, harmony predominates. Just astheentire modern world is generally subject tocentripetal force againstthe uni-versethe yearning toward the center so also the comets, whose movementstherefore express mere harmonic confusion without anyrhythm. Andjust as, onthe other hand, the life and works of antiquity were expansive like their artcentrifugal, that is, absolute within itself andrhythmic so also does centrifugalforce predominate in the movements of the planets, the expansion of the infinitewithin the finite.



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(4) The position of music w ithin the general system of arts is also determinedaccording to this evidence. The general world structure operates completelyindependently from the other potences of nature. Depending on the perspective,it can be the highest and most universal element, the sphere in which the confu-sion of concrete reality directly suspends or dissolves itself into purest reason. Orit is also the deepestpotence. Soalso music, which viewed from the one per-spective is the most universal or general of the real arts and closest to that dis-solution into language andreason, even though from theother perspective it ismerely the first potence of the real arts.

The cosmic bodies in nature are the first unities that emerge from eternalmatter. They also encompass everything within themselves, even though theymust contract into themselves and withdraw into narrower and more particularspheres in order to portray the highest organization within themselves in whichthe unity of nature attains perfect self-intuition. The type of reason inherentwithin them thus expresses itself in their general movements only for the firstpotence. Music, which from the one perspective is the mo st closed of all arts, theone that comprehends forms still within chaos and without differentiation, andthat expresses only the pure form of these movements separated from corporeal-ity, similarly takes up the absolute modelorfigure only asrhythm , harmony,andmelody, that is, fo r the firstpotence, even though with in this sphere it is the mostboundless of allarts.

This concludes the construction of music, since all construction of art canonly intend to present its forms as the essential forms of things. This has beenaccomplished as regards music.Before proceeding further, let me recall the following general points.Our present task is the construction of the part icular form s of art . Since sub-stance and form are one in the absolute and therefore also within the principle ofart, then only that which is within matter, content, or essence can also becomeform. The differentiation between substance and form, however, can be basedonly on the premise that whatever is posited as absolute identity within sub-stance, be posited as relative identity within form.

Now, within the absolute in and for itself the universal and the particular areone such that in it the particular unities or forms o f unity are posited as absolute.Yetforprecisely this reason, because within it they are absolute and asregardseach thus the form is also the essence, and the essence the f o rmfor preciselythis reason, I repeat, they are indistinguishable and undifferentiated within it;those unities or eternal ideas as such can become truly objective by becomingtheir own symbol in theirparticularity as particular forms. That which appearsthrough them is merely the absolute unity, the idea in and for itself. The form isonly the body with which it clothes itself and in which it becomes objective.

The first unity within the absolute essence is in general the one whereby itbears its subjectivity and eternal unity into objectivity or multiplicity, and this


Herbert Schueller, Schelling's Philosophy of Art Forms of Art Music

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