Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (“On the Musically Beautiful”) is Eduard Hanslick’s landmark 1854 essay in musical aesthetics, the founding text of musical formalism. Hanslick argues that the content of music is nothing but “tonally moving forms,” and that beauty in music lies in its structure rather than in any emotion it is said to represent.
Sharply opposed to the emotional and programmatic theories of Wagner and his followers, the book became one of the most debated works of nineteenth-century criticism. Note that the text is in German. Hanslick’s insistence that music means itself, and not extramusical feeling, shaped the whole later course of aesthetics and remains essential reading for anyone studying how music signifies.