Plato-Beethoven: A Hermeneutics for

Nineteenth-Century Music?

Ian Bent

In recent years, the word "hermeneutics" has re-entered the

language of discourse about music-re-entered, that is, in German, after
an absence of perhaps forty years; but really entered for the first time
in the English language. In German, Carl Dahlhaus's definition in
Foundations of Music History of 1967 reawakened our awareness, and
a 1975 volume of essays on the subject under his editorship reinforced
that initiative. 1 In English, the driving force for an exploration of
musical hermeneutics was, of course, Joseph Kerman's polemic on
criticism, supported especially by the writings of Anthony Newcomb;
and the round table at the Bologna Conference of the International
Musicological Society in 1987, entitled "Music Criticism between
Technical and Hermeneutic Analysis," was a symbolic moment in the
evaluation of hermeneutics for musical purposes. 2 Others who have

lCarl Dahlhaus, Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (Cologne: Hans Gerig, 1967),

trans. J. B. Robinson as Foundations of Music History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), 4-5, 71-85 passim; Beitriige zur musikalischen Hermeneutik,
ed. Carl Dahlhaus, Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. 43
(Regensburg: Bosse, 1975).

2Joseph Kerman's initiative started with his "A Profile for Musicology," Joumal of
the American Musicological Society 18 (1965): 61-69, and continued in many places,
including his Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
2 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
contributed to that evaluation directly or indirectly include Peter Kivy,
Edward Cone, Fred Maus, and Marion Guck; but a music-hermeneutic
practice has been formulated and put to the test on music only in the
past five years in the work of Lawrence Kramer, and on texts about
music still more recently by Gary Tomlinson. 3
My own treatment of the field, in volume 2 of my Music Analysis
in the Nineteenth Century, gives a historical account of general
hermeneutics and seeks to illustrate how this was put into practice in
writing about music. 4 The present papers goes beyond that, attempting
to demonstrate more tangibly the working of hermeneutics in the early
nineteenth century. My purpose is to isolate the hermeneutics of its
earliest practitioner, Friedrich Schleiermacher, unfiltered by the
subsequent hermeneutics of Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer and others,
and to consider its relevance to music by looking at one particular and
celebrated piece of writing about music, namely E. T. A. Hoffmann's
review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.6

University Press, 1986). Proceedings of the round table appear in Aui del XlV congresso
della societa internazionale di musicologia ... : vol. 1, Round Tables (Turin: EDT,
1990), 645-90.

3Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, 1800-1900 (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1990), 1-20 passim; Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic:
Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), 1-43,
247-52 passim.

4Ian Bent, ed., Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), vol. 1, Fugue, Form and Style; vol. 2, Hermeneutic
Approaches.

5This paper was first presented at the International Conference on Nineteenth-Century

Music at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England, on July 17, 1994.

6First published in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12 (1809/10): cols. 630-42,

652-59; German edition Friedrich Schnapp, E. T. A. Hoffmann: Schriften zur Musik:
Aujstitze und Rezensionen (Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1977), 34-51; Eng. trans. in E. T.
A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: "Kreisleriana, " "The Poet and the Composer, " Music
Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 234-51, reproduced with modifications and commentary in Bent, Music
Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 2, 141-60; see also pp. 123-24.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 3

Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics: The Practice

Who, then, was Friedrich Schleiermacher? A contemporary of

Hegel, he was a theologian and a philosopher. Educated by the
Moravian pietists and later schooled in the philosophy of Kant, he was
powerfully influenced by the events of the French Revolution. His
theology was already tending towards the liberal when, in 1797, he was
introduced to the circle of August and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis,
Wackenroder, and other literary figures of the Romantic movement.
Indeed, Friedrich Schlegel lived as a tenant at his house for two years,
and the two became close friends and collaborators. Schleiermacher is
even the basis for one of the characters in Schlegel's fragmentary novel
Lucinde, and Schleiermacher himself wrote a defense of the novel. 7
His first theological work, from 1799, On Religion: Speeches to Its
Cultured Despisers, 8 diverged from rational Enlightenment theology by
placing high value on experience and revelation. This book, together
with later ones, 9 established him as the leading Protestant German
theologian of his day and the father of modern Protestant theology.
Around 1797, he and Friedrich Schlegel conceived a plan to translate
all of Plato's works into German. They worked on it together until
1804, when the project caused the two men to fall out. Schleiermacher
then continued the work, writing the introductions to the whole and to

7Friedrich Sch1eiermacher, Vertraute Briefe aber Friedrich Schlegels Lucinde (1800),

ed. K. Gutzow (1835), ed. W. Hirschberg (Weimar: Martin Biewald, 1920). A useful
biography is Martin Redeker, Schleiermacher: Leben und Werk (Berlin: Gruyter, 1968),
trans. John Wallhausser as Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1973).

8Idem, Uber die Religion: Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Veriichtem (Berlin:
Unger, 1799), trans. Richard Crouter as On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

9Idem, Der christliche Glaube (Berlin: Reimer, 1821-22), trans. Hugh Ross
Mackintosh and James Stuart Stewart as The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: Clark, 1928;
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976); Das Leben Jesu: Vorlesungen, ed. K. A. Rtitenik
(Berlin: Reimer, 1864), ed. and with an introduction by Jack C. Verheyden, trans. S.
Maclean Gilmour as The Life of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975).
4 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
each individual dialogue. All of volumes 1 and 2, and part of volume
3, achieved publication before his death. Thereafter, the work remained
incomplete. 10
We can see Schleiermacher's hermeneutics at work by studying his
introductions to Plato's Dialogues, for they have long been held up as
exemplary models of hermeneutic inquiry. For example, the
philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey draws attention to the introduction to The
Republic as follows:

[Schleiermacher] started with a survey of the structure,

comparable to a superficial reading, tentatively grasped the
whole context, illuminated the difficulties, and halted
thoughtfully at all those passages which afforded insight into the
composition. Only then did the interpretation proper begin.ll

In particular, I should like to look at his introduction to the dialogue

entitled the Sophist. The Sophist, not one of the more popular of Plato's
Dialogues, may not possess the drama of, say, the Phaedo, in which
we see the final hours and death of Socrates, or the Meno, in which a
slave is cross-questioned in a demonstration of the existence of Platonic
ideas or forms. Nevertheless, it is an important dialogue-one of three
in which, broadly stated, Plato investigates the nature of philosophy.
Moreover, these are the only three of all of Plato's Dialogues that refer

lOpriedrich Schleiermacher, ed., Platons Werke (Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung,

1804-28), vol. 1, pt. 1 (1804); vol. 1, pt. 2 (1805); vol. 2, pt. 1 (1805); vol. 2, pt. 2
(1807); vol. 2, pt. 3 (1809); vol. 3, pt. 1 (1828) [unfinished]; 2nd ed. (1817-28), trans.
William Dobson as Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato (Cambridge:
Deighton; London: John William Parker, 1836).

llLecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, 1896/97, published as "Die

Entstehung der Hermeneutik," in Philosophische Abhandlungen, Christoph Sigwart zu
seinem 70. Geburtstag 28 Miirz 1900 gewidmet (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1900), 185-202;
Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1924),5:317-31; trans. Hans Peter
Rickman in W. Dilthey: Selected Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1976), 246-63. The quoted passage is on p. 259.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 5
to one another, and in addition, they share a common group of
characters. 12 Therefore they possess an overt relationship. The three
are:

Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman

What is more, these three are part of a larger sequence of seven that
can be thought of as relating to the trial and death of Socrates:

Theaetetus-Euthyphro-Sophist-Statesman-

Apology-Crito-Phaedo

Theaetetus is the opening salvo of this sequence: in it, Socrates

discusses the question' 'What is knowledge?" The Sophist falls roughly
in the middle of the sequence: Socrates first faces the charges against
him in the Euthyphro, the Apology describes the trial, Socrates refuses
the opportunity to escape from prison in the Crito, and he makes his
farewell and drinks the hemlock at the end of the Phaedo. But this
sequence itself relates back to several earlier dialogues that (so to
speak) set it up and relates forward to the Timaeus, which deals with
the nature of the universe. In other words, the Sophist exists within a
series of expanding groups, rather like Chinese boxes.

Schleiermacher's Introduction to the Sophist

Schleiermacher's introduction starts:

In the Sophist we distinguish at once and at the first glance two

perfectly separate masses, one of which, distributed into the two
extremities, starts with the idea of art, and endeavours, by

12Theaetetus: Eucleides, Terpsion, Socrates, Theodorus, Theaetetus; Sophist:

Socrates, Theodorus, Theaetetus, Eleatic Stranger; Statesman: Socrates, Young Socrates,
Theodorus, Eleatic Stranger.
6 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
continuous division and exclusion, to find the nature and true
explanation of a Sophist; while the other, which forces itself into
the middle of this . . . speaks of the existent and non-existent
[i.e., being and not-being]. (246)13

By "at first glance" Schleiermacher means that he has begun with a

non-critical reading of the dialogue, merely to observe anything that
strikes him, and that he could not help noticing this particular
distinction because of the very different kind of discourse used in these
two parts (that concerning the sophist, and that concerning being and
not-being). The opening and closing parts analyze their subject by
continuous subdivision, whereas the middle part proceeds by linear
dialectical reasoning. We might represent Schleiermacher's conception
of the structure diagrammatically as follows:

Figure 1. Diagram of Schleiermacher's conception of the structure

D_e_fi_ill_·U_·o_n_o_f_sO_P_h_is_t_--' _
L - -_ _ ~i:n:being _1,-__·_._. _S_O_Ph_i_st_ _--'

(What do we mean by "continuous subdivision"? We might take

the case of hunting. Hunting divides into the hunting of aquatic and
land-based creatures; land-based hunting divides into the pursuit of wild

13This and all other translations from Platons Werke are taken from the 1836 Dobson
edition cited above in n. 10.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 7

and tame animals; tame animals into man and other animals 14 and so on
until we conclude that sophism is a form of hunting, namely the
hunting of rich and promising youths by flattery!

Figure 2. Continuous subdivision

art

~
productive acquisitive

~ exchange hunting

~
aquatIc land-based

wOe
1\
other man

~
commumty pnvate

~ amatory flattery = sophist

(gifts) (pay)

We can see from this example the irony with which Plato spotlights
sophism: in the course of his characterization he portrays it first as one
menial occupation then as another-merchandizing, juggling, and so
on.)

l~his step is not fully spelled out by Plato. The argumentation occurs at 221E-223B
of the dialogue.
8 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16

After distinguishing the middle from the opening and closing

layers 15 of the dialogue, Schleiermacher says that on grounds of
construction we would assume the outer layer to be the real subject of
the dialogue and the inner layer (about being and not-being) to be a
necessary digression to the outer (the definition of a sophist), On the
other hand, since we learn nothing about the sophist that we have not
learned in previous dialogues, and since the central debate of being and
not-being adds to the larger debate in the dialogues as a whole, then we
may see the outer and inner layers of this dialogue as like a shell and
a kernel: 16

Figure 3. Outer and inner layers of the dialogue

shell kernel shell

'----__
D_efi_lil_i_tio_ll_O_f_S_OP_hi_'s_t_---' _ ~~n:being _I L-_ _' __SO_P_hi_st_ _--l
•.

But then Schleiermacher executes a shift. Is not the definition of the

sophist part of a great trilogy of dialogues in which the philosopher, the
sophist, and the statesman are in turn described? Surely, then, the
definition of the sophist must be of at least equal importance to that of
the inner layer. So, by viewing the Sophist as part of a larger whole,
he now concludes:

there is here nothing to be rejected as mere shell, but, . , the

ISDobson translates them as "masses,"

16Ibid" 247: "shell and setting,"

 Bent, Plato-Beethoven 9
whole dialogue is like a precious fruit of which a true
connoisseur is glad to enjoy the 0utward peel at the same time
with the fruit itself, because grown as the former is into the
whole, it could not be separated without hurting the pure and
proper relish of the latter. (249)

Indeed, the outer layer is not all satire. It contains, for example, one
argument relevant to the larger framework of Socrates' trial and death,
namely that the sort of cross-examination for which Socrates is famous
purges and purifies the mind of inconsistencies and falsehoods, and is,
contrary to the charges against Socrates, non-subversive (249-50).
Schleiermacher now shifts back to the parts and whole within the
Sophist. He turns to the central layer of the dialogue, showing that its
structure mirrors that of the dialogue as a whole; that is, it comprises
again an outer shell and an inner kernel: 17

Figure 4. Outer shell and inner kernel

shell kernel shell

L -_ _S_p_eec_h_an_d_f_al_se_h_oo_d_...... _ ~i:n:being _1L-___ s_p_ee_C_h_"_"_O_----'

The outer part is a discussion of speech and falsehood; the inner part
is a necessary digression that reinforces that discussion, on being and
not-being. What is more, our inner and outer layers are what we might
call "isomorphic" (to use a modern term), for in each case the outer
discussion loses its way, and the inner discussion is interpolated so that

17Ibid., 250: the parts are 236E-241B I 241B-259E I 259E-264C.

10 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16

the outer one can find its footing again (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Outer and inner discussions

.c
()
Q)
Q)
0..
CI)
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 11
Schleiermacher calls the inner-inner kernel (which itself divides into
two parts 18) "the most valuable and precious core of the dialogue,"
where "the most inward sanctuary of philosophy is opened in a purely
philosophical manner" (251).
Moreover, the inner' 'layer" of the dialogue refutes several of the
past schools of Greek philosophy, and Schleiermacher teases these out
one by one. 19 From this set of external references, Schleiermacher then
turns to this dialogue's "intimate relation" to two dialogues not
included in our Socratic sequence, namely the Parmenides and the
Timaeus. The Parmenides had, in his view, initiated a discussion of
how "ideas," in their pure form, can be said to exist-a discussion
which later resumes in "a whole series of successive dialogues from
the Theaetetus upwards." In the Sophist, in turn, the "foundation" is
"laid perfectly and dialectically" for the Timaeus (see Figure 6).20 He
then establishes links with several other dialogues on the basis of
contenfl and uses these finally to confirm the closer links within its
own trilogy, Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman.

18Ibid., 252-53: being, and opposites (represented by rest and motion):

Schleiermacher indicates 251B-254D i 254D-259E, but it might better be shown as
241B-250D I 250D-259D.

19Ibid., 254-59: Parmenides (241Dft), the Ionic philosophers (245Eft), the atomists
(246Eft), the idealists (248Aft).

2'1bid., 259-60. On continuity between the Parmenides and Theaetetus onward, see
ibid., 118, 132 (Parmenides), 198-99 (Theaetetus). In Schleiermacher's chronology (no
longer accepted), the Meno, Euthydemus, and Cratylus arose between the Theaetetus and
the Sophist (ibid., 204, 263), so "successive" implicitly includes these. The proposed
linkage, by its nature, "is intended to be said preliminarily only, " and has remained so,
since Schleiermacher died before reaching the translation of, and commentary on, the
Timaeus.

21Ibid., 261-63: Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Meno, Republic.

12 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16

Figure 6. Sophist as focal point of five dialogues

....
'"
~
M
(go
..c

(""""
0
CIl

t::l... c
Cl
V)
( .S
....
( ·2
<.;::::

LJ /I\.
/I\.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 13

This brief glimpse of Schleiermacher at work enables us to

summarize as follows:

First, we saw borne out in his introduction to the Sophist what

Dilthey had signalled in the statement quoted earlier, namely that
Schleiermacher's method entails an initial exploratory reading-a
"naive" incursion, we might say, into the text; that the reading process
then starts all over again at a more detailed level; and that only at this
second stage does the hermeneutic method proper begin.

Second, Schleiermacher works always with parts and wholes. He

seeks to define what is subordinate and what is superordinate-what
functions within what, and how it so functions.

Third, in doing this, he often runs into a blank wall, an impasse

-what hermeneuticists call an aporia. When this happens, he executes
a shift to a higher or lower level-that is to say, he starts treating as a
part what has previously been a whole, or vice versa. By shifting levels
in this way, he can later work his way back to the impasse and find his
way through it. In so doing, he gradually fills out the picture bit by bit,
until the totality stands clear before him.

Fourth, his normal mode of operation is not that of constructing a

narrative. He doesn't "tell the story" of the dialogue; rather, he
reflects on the elements of the dialogue. That is not to say that he never
talks us through a portion of Plato's argument, for he does
occasionally; but when he does this, it is always in the service of this
reflective process, never for its own sake.

This brings us to the fifth point, namely that Schleiermacher works

with the "message" of Plato's dialogue rather than with its outward
form or its literary style. The structure that he identifies is a structure
of meaning, not of external factors. Every text, Schleiermacher
realized, whatever its language, and however close to or remote from
our experience, is to some degree "foreign" to us, and thus demands
to be "understood." Verstand, the capacity to understand, and
14 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
Verstehen, the act of understanding, are central to hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics treats text as message. Its concern lies with the author's
intention; its purpose is to facilitate understanding in the reader. 22

Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics: The Theory

Although Schleiermacher wrote no book on the theory of

hermeneutics, he lectured on hermeneutic method at the University of
Berlin for a quarter of a century, and at his death he left behind his
lecture notes for that course and other documents. All of these are now
available in a German edition, and that edition in an English
translation. 23
It was Schleiermacher's achievement to create a field of general
hermeneutics. In the eighteenth century there had existed three separate
fields: biblical hermeneutics, classical literary hermeneutics, and
juridical hermeneutics. In the first decade of the nineteenth century,
Schleiermacher charted out an independent hermeneutics, capable of
treating these three categories of texts, and in principle all other types

22The irony of this is Schleiermacher's name, which means literally "maker of

veils," hence by extension "obfuscator" or "obscurantist." It was Nietzsche who
commented on this: "On the roll of knowledge the Germans are inscribed with nothing
but dubious names, all that they have ever produced have been 'unconscious' coiners-
an appellation as appropriate to Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher,
as it is to Leibnitz, and Kant: they are all obfuscators [Schleiermacher]" (' 'The Case of
Wagner" [1882], §3, published in Ecce homo [1908]). It is unclear to me whether
Nietzsche is implying also a propensity of German Idealist philosophers to bear
unfortunate names: Fichte = "spruce tree"; Kant = slang for "peripheral region";
Schopenhauer = "hewer of ?"; Leibnitz = "body net?"; Hegel = ? Elsewhere,
Nietzsche remarked: "He who has once contracted Hegelism and Sch1eiermacherism is
never quite cured of them" ("David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer," Untimely
Meditations, Part I [1873], trans. Reginald John Hollingdale, with an introduction by
J. P. Stern [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], 27).

23Heinz Kimmerle, Hermeneutik, nach den Handschriften neu herausgegeben . . .

(Heidelberg: Karl Winter, 211974), trans. James Duke and Jack Forstman as
Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts (Missoula, MT: American Academy of
Religion, 1977; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986).
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 15

of texts as well, but which moreover was applicable also to spoken

communication.
General hermeneutics was the field that lay between three other
established fields of textual interpretation: philology (the study of
language in and of itself), criticism (the repair of defective texts), and
exegesis (the expounding of the meaning of individual words and
phrases within a text). Hermeneutics, then, handled the text as a whole
and dealt with its meaning as a whole, i.e., its message. Crucial to
Schleiermacher's approach was his belief that, in all communication,
misunderstanding was more likely to occur than not. Indeed, while
thinking appears identical in everyone, Schleiermacher believed
(contrary to Hegel) that each person thinks in a different language. But
at the same time, he did not (like Derrida) revel in difference: he held
that it was essential to strive to transcend difference. 24
At the heart of Schleiermacher's hermeneutic theory, then, were
two pairs of opposites: one of these we have already encountered,
whole versus part; the other is new to us, namely, objective versus
subjective. As to the first of these, Schleiermacher took a broadly
organic view of any text: at all levels of construction there is a whole,
comprised of parts; and this relation applies not only within the organic
work itself, but also outside (as we saw with the Sophist), to the work
in relation to other works in its class, to that class in relation to some
larger class, to some body of knowledge, to a given social context, and
so forth. As he said, for example:

The vocabulary and the history of an author's age together form

a whole from which his writings must be understood as a part,
and vice versa . . . . Complete knowledge always involves an
apparent circle, that each part can be understood only out of the
whole to which it belongs, and vice versa. (113)25

24Andrew Bowie: Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 1990), 153.

25 All quotations in this section of the essay are taken from Kimmerle, Hermeneutik,
nach den Handschriften neu herausgegeben . . . , trans. Duke and Forstman as
Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts.
16 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
There exists a dialectical relation between whole and parts. The
hermeneutic principle, he says,

is that just as the whole is understood from the parts, so the

parts can be understood only from the whole. This principle is
of such consequence for hermeneutics and so incontestable that
one cannot even begin to interpret without using it. (195-96)

As to the second opposition, that of subjective and objective,

Schleiermacher tersely observes:

Analysis of the task . . . proceeds from two entirely different

points: understanding by reference to the language and
understanding by reference to the one who speaks. Because of
this double-character of understanding, interpretation is an art.
Neither aspect can be completed by itself. (68)

In this antithesis, "language" corresponds with the objective pole,

and "the one who speaks" with the subjective. Schleiermacher termed
them the "grammatical" and "psychological" aspects. In short, he
meant that the interpreter must approach the message of a text from two
opposite ends simultaneously: from the linguistic fabric of the
communication, and from the mind of the writer or speaker. As he
said:

understanding . . . always involves two moments: to under-

stand what is said in the context of the language with its
possibilities, and to understand it as a fact in the thinking of the
speaker. ... Understanding takes place only in the coinherence
of these two moments. (98)

But these two pairs of opposites are unworkable without one

paramount principle-one overriding strategy-which is the quin-
tessence of hermeneutic procedure: the celebrated hermeneutic circle.
Take the grammatical and the psychological: When one starts, one has
neither a complete knowledge of the individual language of the
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 17

utterance concerned nor a complete knowledge of the psychology of its

author. Thus, in Schleiermacher's words:

Since in both cases such complete knowledge is impossible, it

is necessary to move back and forth between the grammatical
and psychological sides, and no rules can stipulate exactly how
to do this. (100)

This "moving back and forth" suggests a shuttle, and indeed the
metaphor of a shuttle is almost as common in Schleiermacher as that of
the circle. For on a loom, a shuttle must be in constant motion, and the
pattern that it weaves emerges, so to speak, perpendicularly to the
plane of the shuttle-not in the path of the shuttle, as would be the case
for many other methods of inquiry.
The circle or shuttle operates just as constantly on the polarity of
whole and part. There is a particularly vivid passage that portrays the
uncertain progress of the interpreter:

When we consider the task of interpretation with this principle

in mind, we have to say that our increasing understanding of
each sentence and of each section, an understanding which we
achieve by starting at the beginning and moving forward slowly,
is always provisional. It becomes more complete as we are able
to see each larger section as a coherent unity. But as soon as we
turn to a new part we encounter new uncertainties and begin
again, as it were, in the dim morning light. It is like starting all
over, except that as we push ahead the new material illumines
everything we have already treated, until suddenly at the end
every part is clear and the whole work is visible in sharp and
definite contours. (198)

Striking in this graphic description is the absence from its portrayal

of the hermeneutic circle of any derogatory overtones. The interpreter
is not "stuck in a loop"; above all, Schleiermacher would never have
dreamt of depicting it as a "vicious circle," as it came to be called by
later writers. Far from vicious, the circle or shuttle was for him a
18 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
wholly productive process; indeed, it was the only way forward. It was
the means by which the hermeneuticist overcame those impasses of
which I spoke earlier. The circling gradually brought two separate
bodies of evidence together until they fused as a single interpretation.
Circling was thus like the focusing of two separate images into a single,
three-dimensional image.

Plato and Beethoven

Plato's Dialogues have been an object of interest to several

hermeneuticists, and it is not difficult to see why. For a start, very little
was known in the early nineteenth century of the order in which the
Dialogues were written or intended to be read. The physical sources
offered few clues. The internal evidence within the Dialogues was
labyrinthine, and any intimations were well concealed. Where no order
was known, the overall structure of Plato's philosophic argument was
obscure, hence its very intention cryptic. Hermeneutics, with its
constant shift between grammar and psychology, form and content, was
an ideal method for laying siege to that problem. Moreover, there was
an intrinsic kinship between the hermeneuticist's method and Socrates'
dialectic, with its patient interrogations, its dramatic impasses, and
extravagant digressions. It is not surprising, then, that Schleiermacher
devoted a significant part of his energies to the Dialogues, and that they
have also been a lifetime preoccupation for Hans Georg Gadamer in the
present century. 26
For writers on music in the nineteenth century, the only composer
who exerted a comparable fascination was Beethoven. His music, too,
was full of dramatic impasses and extravagant digressions. For
example, the pounding diminished-seventh and added-sixth chords that
collapse into a minor-ninth chord before giving way to a novel E-minor

26See in particular Hans Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight

Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. and with an introduction by P. Christopher Smith
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); also Truth and Method, trans. Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Steed & Ward, 1975,2/1989; German
original, 1960).
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 19

lyrical theme in the development section of the "Eroica" Symphony's

first movement are a veritable aporia in music and stand as a paradigm
of such impasses in Beethoven's work. The ordering of his musical
discourse was hard to fathom and the clues were often well concealed.
Whether it was governed by rational thinking, or whether only by
impulse, was unclear. In such a situation, hermeneutic method might
have laid siege to the issue. The question is, Did it?

E. T. A. Hoffmann's Review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

The review published by E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1810 of

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony stands, of course, as a monument of
music criticism, unprecedented in its command of technical detail, and
marked out for its statement on the autonomy of instrumental music and
for its organic imagery.
The central concern of this review was to demonstrate the
composer's control over his material. Hoffmann's remark that "the
whole work will sweep past many [listeners] like an inspired rhapsody"
(250)27 was intended to represent the prevailing reaction to Beethoven's
music in 1810. It was, however, a reaction against which Hoffmann set
his cap. As he says, "it is usual to regard [Beethoven],s works merely
as products of a genius who ignores form and discrimination of thought
and surrenders to his creative fervour and the passing dictates of his
imagination" (238). Hoffmann made the point even more forcefully
when he recast parts of this review for inclusion in his Kreisleriana in
1814-15, saying satirically:

wise judges, gazing about them with a superior air, assure us

that we can take their word for it as men of great intellect and
profound insight: the good Beethoven is by no means lacking in
wealth and vigour of imagination, but he does not know how to
control it! There is no question of selection and organisation of
ideas; following the so-called inspired method, he dashes

27This and all other quotations in this section of the essay are taken from E. T. A.
Hoffmann's Musical Writings, ed. Charlton and Clarke, cited above in n. 6.
20 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
everything down just as the feverish workings of his imagination
dictate to him at that moment. (98)

Then Hoffmann retorted tellingly:

But what if it is only your inadequate understanding which fails

to grasp the inner coherence of every Beethoven composition?
What if it is entirely your fault that the composer's language is
clear to the initiated but not to you . . . ? (98; italics in the
original)

It is understanding that is the crux of Hoffmann's concern. It is

understanding that he seeks to engender by his review. His purpose is
clear:

In truth, ... his controlling self [is] detached from the inner
realm of sounds and rul[es] it in absolute authority .... [O]nly
the most penetrating study of Beethoven's instrumental music
can reveal its high level of rational awareness . . . . (98)

"Rational awareness" translates Besonnenheit, a notion central to the

review, the opposite pole to genius, and a term that will feature in our
argument below.
Hoffmann's review is usually depicted as falling into three parts: an
introduction, a main part, and a conclusion. In reality, it is
considerably more complex than this. It operates within six distinct
orbits. Working from the outer to the inner, these are: (1) instrumental
music in general, (2) instrumental music from Haydn to Beethoven, (3)
the Fifth Symphony as a whole, (4) relationships between pairs of its
movements, (5) each individual movement as a whole, and (6) the flow
of the music from moment to moment. Any depiction of the structure
of the review must take into account the movement among these orbits,
for each orbit is the "whole" of the orbit inside it and/or the "part"
of the orbit outside it.
The most striking instance of the shift from part to whole occurs at
the end of Hoffmann's description of the Scherzo. On reaching the first
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 21
chord of the Finale, he (Hoffmann) breaks off with the remark, "The
reviewer has previously mentioned the intensifying effect of extending
a theme by a few bars, and in order to make this clearer he illustrates
these extensions together [Ex.]" (247-48). By laying out four versions
of the opening theme, and then a fifth, in a semi-tabular manner, he
offers a conspectus of the third movement as a whole; and having done
this he draws a comparison of the tutti theme of the Scherzo with the
main theme of the first movement (' 'Just as simple and yet, when it is
glimpsed behind later passages, just as potent as the theme of the
opening Allegro is the idea of the minuet's first tutti [Ex.]" [248]). In
doing the latter, he refers back to a similar point when, after describing
the first movement, he treated that movement as a whole, identifying
the forces that bind all parts of the movement-primary ideas,
secondary ideas, and episodes-together:

There is no simpler idea than that on which Beethoven has based

his entire Allegro [Ex.] and one perceives with admiration how
he was able to relate all the secondary ideas and episodes by
their rhythmic content to this simple theme, so that they serve
to reveal more and more facets of the movement's overall
character, which the theme by itself could only hint at. . . .
[T]he episodes and constant allusions to the main theme
demonstrate how the whole movement with all its distinctive
features was not merely conceived in the imagination but also
clearly thought through. (244)

Thus, at the end of the first movement he shifts from the individual
moment to the movement as a whole; at the end of the Scherzo he
shifts first from the individual moment to the third movement as a
whole and then to the first and third movements as a related pair.
But shifts between part and whole are only one aspect of this
review. Hoffmann also shifts frequently between what Schleiermacher
called the "grammatical" and the "psychological." For example, of
the first movement:

after an episode again built only on a two-bar phrase taken up

22 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
alternately by the violins and wind instruments, while the cellos
playa figure in contrary motion and the double-basses rise, the
following chords are heard from the whole orchestra: [Ex.].
They are sounds that depict the breast, constricted and affrighted
by presentiments of enormity, struggling for air. But like a
friendly figure moving through the clouds and shining through
the darkness of night, a theme now enters that was touched on
by the horns in E flat major in [m.58]. (241-42)

The shift from purely technical to emotive (to use Peter Kivy's terms)
and back again is palpable; indeed, it probably induces queasiness in
the modern reader. Hoffmann's intention is clear: to attack the passage
concerned from the two ends-from the short hammered phrases,
diminished sevenths, heavy texture, then unison diatonic theme that
constitute the "grammar," and the effect of all this on the listener that
constitutes the "psychology' '-and to fuse the two in the reader!
listener's mind. As we heard Schleiermacher say, "Understanding takes
place only in the coinherence of these two moments."
As Hoffmann shifts from objective to subjective, he often
simultaneously moves from orbit to orbit. Take his opening description
of the Scherzo: The slow movement has, at the psychological level,
temporarily replaced the "awful phantom" of the first movement by
"comforting figures." However, at the grammatical level, the constant
modulations, key-juxtapositions, and chromaticisms have not gone
away, and so we sense that the first-movement horrors may return at
any moment. Of the Scherzo he then says:

The distinctive modulations; the closes on the dominant major,

its root becoming the tonic of the following bass theme in the
minor mode; this theme itself, repeatedly extended by a few
bars at a time: (246)

-all of these are grammatical points-

it is particularly these features which express so strongly the

character of Beethoven's music described above, and arouse
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 23

once more those disquieting presentiments of a magical

spirit-world with which the Allegro assailed the listener's heart.
(246)

-all psychological points-

The theme in C minor, played by cellos and basses alone, turns

in the third bar towards G minor; the horns then sustain the G
while violins and violas, together with bassoons in the second
bar and clarinets in the third, have a four-bar phrase cadencing
on G .... (246)

-grammatical again-

The restless yearning inherent in the theme now reaches a level

of unease that so constricts the breast that only odd fragmented
sounds escape it. (247)

-and psychological.
As Hoffmann intermits the grammatical and psychological, he also
reaches up out of the orbit of the Scherzo into that of the kinship
between Allegro and Scherzo on which he will later capitalize at the
end of the review by speaking of the "relationship which exists
between the subjects of the two Allegros and the [Scherzo]" (251). At
the same time, he also moves to the penultimate orbit, that of Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven, because his allusion to "the magical
spirit-world" recalls his earlier reference to the "nocturnal spirit-world
[in] a purple shimmer" and the "magical quality" that he finds in
Mozart, and the allusion to "restless yearning" recalls the
"inexpressible yearning" at that same point; and to the outermost orbit,
that of instrumental music as a whole, by recalling his references to
"the realm of the infinite," "an unknown realm," and "that infinite
yearning which is the essence of romanticism" (238).
To summarize, then, the hermeneuticist reading that I have given
Hoffmann's review shows that it begins-after a presumed cursory
reading-at the level of the largest totality by discussing autonomous
24 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16

instrumental music, and then proceeds to the step-by-step progression

to Haydn's, Mozart's, and Beethoven's instrumental music, which it
tracks three times before taking each of the Fifth Symphony's four
movements in turn. At the end of each movement it moves out to the
orbit of that movement as a totality, and then (from the second
movement onwards) on out so as to draw affinities with previous
movements, concluding with a conspectus of all four movements, and
a confirmation of his initial hypothesis-that the work "is conceived of
genius and executed with profound awareness ... " (251). At any time
in this procedure he may reach out to the remoter orbits to establish
links that illuminate his interpretation.

Hoffmann and Schleiermacher

Having drawn attention to the similarities of procedure and method

between Friedrich Schleiermacher's introductions to the Dialogues of
Plato and E. T. A. Hoffmann's review of the Fifth Symphony of
Beethoven, I should perhaps rest my case at this point. I have shuttled
between two bodies of material, drawing parallels between them-to a
limited extent, thus, my method has itself been hermeneutic. To stop
here would be consistent with my methodological subject matter. But
the power of erklaren (to explain) over verstehen (to understand) is
strong. The pull of the positivist method is irresistible.
If Hoffmann's review is, as I have suggested, hermeneutic in
method, then since Schleiermacher was the creator of a general
hermeneutics, and since the latter published the first exemplar of his
method in 1804, it follows that influence, direct or indirect, must have
been exerted by the one upon the other. The establishment of lines of
influence is always difficult, even in those rare cases where there are
statements on record by those involved (one thinks of Stravinsky, of
Cage). Without such statements, as in the present instance, the task is
hazardous. But the attraction of proving the case is seductive. So let me
at least see how far I can carry out the investigation-though without
any high hopes of success.
There is no lack of relevant biographical information. The
approximate date on which Hoffmann made the acquaintance of
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 25

Schleiermacher for the first time is known: between June 18 and July
21, 1807. Even the precise time and place of that meeting is recorded. 28
The two men met again on December 12, 1807. 29 Much later in life, in
1820, Hoffmann was to defend Schleiermacher against charges of
corrupting youth, and was admitted as a member of the "Society for
Anarchy," of which Schleiermacher had been a founder-member since
1809. 30
Such evidence allows the possibility of influence, to be sure, but
does not establish it. Any further step will lead me into marshy ground.
One commentator reports that, on moving to Warsaw in 1804,
Hoffmann began a lifelong friendship with Julius Eduard Itzig (an
assistant judge there at the time, and later to become a senior official
of the Supreme Court in Berlin), and that Itzig made it his business to
acquaint Hoffmann with the poetry of Tieck and Brentano, the
philosophy of Fichte, and probably also with the publications of
Schleiermacher. 31
Unsubstantiated as this is, I cannot unfortunately place any reliance
on it. Nonetheless, let me explore its possibilities without giving it

28E. T. A. Hoffmanns Briefwechsel, ed. Hans von Muller and Friedrich Schnapp, 3
vols. (Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1967-69), 1:214 (to Itzig-see n. 31 below): "Yesterday
I was at Mme Levi's from 7:30 to 8:30, where many people were drinking tea with rum
and making rational conversation; from 9:30 to 11:30 by invitation at Winzer's, where
once again many people were drinking rum with tea- I made the acquaintance of
Bernhardi (has a handsome face), of Schleiermacher, and especially of the composer
Schneider ... " (first half of the letter destroyed, hence no date).

29Ibid., 231 (to Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel): "Fichte and Schleiermacher are again
here, Werner is going back to Berlin" (Zacharias Werner [1768-1823]: childhood friend,
poet, dramatist). On February 9, 1809, he lunched at the house of senior civil servant
Lorenz Fuchs and his wife (in Bamberg?), where Schleiermacher was the topic of
conversation; see E. T. A. Hoffmanns Leben und Werk in Daten und Bildem (Frankfurt
am Main: Insel, 1968), 169 (presumably a diary entry).

30Ibid., 298.

31Ernst von Schenck, E. T. A. Hoffmann: ein Kampf um das BUd des Menschen
(Berlin: Verlag die Runde, 1939), 139. Itzig (1780-1849): born Isaak Elias Itzig, changed
first names in 1799, last name to Hitzig in 1809; later Hoffmann's first biographer.
Schenck offers no evidence for this assertion.
26 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
credence. lfHitzig did draw Hoffmann's attention to Schleiermacher's
publications, and if those publications included Plato's Works (two
large assumptions), then between 1804 and 1807 (when Hoffmann
returned to Berlin) Hoffmann could have encountered volume 1,
published in 1804, which included Schleiermacher's introduction to the
Dialogues as a whole and his individual introductions to the Phaedrus,
Lysis, Protagoras, and Laches, as well as their translations; volumes
2 and 3, published in 1805, which contained thirteen more dialogues
with their introductions, including the Parmenides and the Theaetetus;
and volume 4, published in 1807, which included four more, including
the Sophist itself, and the Statesman. In short, any or all of the
introductions to twenty-one dialogues might have come into Hoffmann's
hands between 1804 and 1807. And if all of this were the case, he
might even have encountered volume 5, published in 1809, which
contained the introductions to and translations of a further eight
dialogues, before writing his review of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in
1810.
However, all of this is idle speculation. None of the external
evidence has elicited demonstrable influence. To turn now to internal
evidence is to lead to somewhat firmer ground. There is in fact one
allusion to Plato's Dialogues in Hoffmann's writings. It occurs in
Kreisleriana, in a letter from Baron Wallborn to Kapellmeister
Kreisler:

Are you not, my dear Sir, a small, strange-looking man, with

a physiognomy that one could compare in some respects with
that of Socrates? This was highly praised by Alcibiades because
the god within it was concealed behind a peculiar mask, yet
shone forth in brilliant flashes of lightning, bold, graceful, and
terrible!32

The reference here, as Charlton has identified, is to the praise of

Socrates with which Alcibiades begins his speech in the Symposium:

32Kreisleriana, pt. 2, item 1, ed. Charlton and Clarke, 125, where the allusion is
identified as to the Symposium, 215A-216D.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 27
Look at him! Isn't he just like a statue of Silenus? You know the
kind of statue I mean; you'll find them in any shop in town.
It's a Silenus sitting, his flute or his pipes in his hands, and it's
hollow. It's split right down the middle, and inside it's full of
tiny statues of the gods. 33

Could it be through Schleiermacher's introduction and translation that

Hoffmann came to know this passage? The Symposium appeared in
volume 4 of Schleiermacher's edition (1807), along with the Sophist
and the Statesman, where the three are presented as a "trilogy.' ,34
Moreover, Schleiermacher considered Alcibiades' , 'panegyric' , to
Socrates "manifestly the crest and crown of the whole dialogue, "35
such that if Hoffmann had read Schleiermacher's introduction to the
Symposium, his attention would have been drawn directly to that
passage.
We must be careful, however. The section of Kreisleriana in which
the Wallborn letter appears was written in 1814. Even if we could
demonstrate that Hoffmann's knowledge of the Symposium came from
Schleiermacher's edition, we would still not have established a link
between Schleiermacher and the Fifth Symphony review of 1810.
There is just one further piece of internal evidence to consider, and
it takes me to yet another of Plato's Dialogues. The Greek word
sophrosyne (aw4;>poavvYJ) denotes in one sense "soundness of mind,"

33Plato: Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis and
Cambridge: Hackett, 1989),65. Woodruff footnotes that "flute" translates aulos, which
is really a reed instrument.

34"Der Sophist" appears in vol. 2, pt. 2 (1807), 123-421143-240

(introduction/translation); "Der Staatsmann," 241-55/256-354; and "Das Gastmahl"
(literally "The Banquet," i.e., the Symposium), 355-70/371-452. The editorial notes
appear on pp. 482-99, 500-511, and 512-18, respectively. The reference to "trilogy" is
on p. 359. In his pursuit of parts and wholes, Schleiermacher interpreted the Symposium
and the Phaedo (vol. 2, pt. 3 [1809],5-22/23-124) as a dialogue-pair portraying Socrates
the philosopher, and so considered Sophist-Statesman-(Symposium + Phaedo) a
"trilogy" that portrayed a philosopher as outwardly mortal and inwardly immortal.

35Dobson, 27-28.
28 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16

"moderation," and "discretion"; and in a second, related sense

"moderation in desires," "self-control," "temperance," "chastity,"
and "sobriety. ,,36 Platonic use of the term arises in the Protagoras,
where, in the sense of "temperance" or "self-control," it figures as
one virtue among several, others being wisdom, courage, justice, and
holiness. The term comes to the fore (it is tempting to say "again,"
assuming precedence for the Protagoras) in the Charmides, where it is
the sole subject of an extensive inquiry.
In the course of Socrates' dialectical moves within the Charmides,
sophrosyne changes from being "temperance" to being a "science of
self" in which one knows "what one knows and does not know," and
then to being the knowledge of good and evil, the end-product being a
characteristically Socratic inconclusiveness. But in the course of the
discussion, the notion that sophrosyne is a superordinate art which rules
over a lower order of such arts as carpentry, medicine, geometry,
shoe-making, navigation, or flute-playing is given serious consideration.
The relevance of these last two paragraphs is that
Schleiermacher's translation of sophrosyne is Besonnenheit, which
signifies in modern German first' 'deliberation," "circumspection,"
"thoughtfulness," "discretion," etc.; and second "presence of mind,"
, 'levelheadedness, " "collectedness," etc. 37 Schleiermacher maintains
this translation consistently throughout the Protagoras and the
Charmides.
As I stated earlier, Besonnenheit is a term crucial to Hoffmann's
argument about the Fifth Symphony-one of two terms that he couples:
Besonnenheit and Genialitat. Their relationship is encapsulated in
Hoffmann's closing statement that the work is "conceived of genius
and executed with profound awareness": dass es genial efjunden, und

36Henry George Liddell, ed., An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1940), 789.

37The verb besinnen is "to reflect (on)," "to ponder," "to consider"; its past
participle besonnen is ' 'prudent, ' , , 'circumspect, ' , , 'sober, " "discreet, " but also
(perhaps by influence from Besinnung, "reason," "considerateness," etc.) "sensible,"
"considerate. "
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 29
mit defer Besonnenheit ausgejahrt,38 where these two quintessentially
nineteenth-century terms 39 are shadowed by an equally quintessentially
eighteenth-century pair, Erfindung and Ausjahrung. If genius presides
over the process of "invention," then it is rational awareness that
presides over' 'articulation" of that genius. Genius is here the lower
order of art, rational awareness the superordinate art. Just as, in
Charmides, Besonnenheit was the "science of self" (and it is this
meaning that Schleiermacher picks out in his introduction, emphasizing
"the complete difference between knowledge and perception with
reference to its power of making itself its own object' '40), so too in
Hoffmann's review it governs Beethoven's symphony: "He is
nevertheless fully the equal of Haydn and Mozart in rational awareness,
his controlling self detached from the inner realm of sounds and ruling
it in absolute authority [Er trennt sein Ich von dem innern Reich der
Tone und gebietet daraber als unumschrankter Herr]. ,,41 Besonnenheit
and Genialitat are ultimately fused in a single notion, "rational genius
[die besonnene Genialitat].' ,42
For a definitive statement of the Socratic position on rationality with
respect to art, it is to, of all places, the Apology-the dialogue in which
Socrates defends himself at his trial, is found guilty, and is sentenced
to death-that we must turn. In search of greater wisdom than his own,
Socrates goes first to the politicians, then to the poets

tragic, dithyrambic, and the rest .... So I took up poems over

38Charlton and Clarke, 251; original in AmZ 12 (1809/10): col. 658 (see n. 6 above
for full citations).

39Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (Deutsches Worterbuch [Leipzig: Hirtzel]) cites only
Goethe and Fichte for Besonnenheit; Klinger, Schiller, and Goethe for besonnen in this
sense (vol. 1 [1805]); and Goethe, Schiller (1795, 1797), Tieck, and von Humboldt for
Genialittlt (vol. 4, pt. 1 [1897]).
4°Dobson, 107.

41AmZ, 12: cols. 633-34; Charlton and Clarke, 238.

42Col. 658 = p. 251.

30 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
which I thought they had taken special pains, and asked them
what they meant .... Now, I am ashamed to tell you the truth,
Gentlemen, but still, it must be told. There was hardly anyone
present who could not give a better account than they of what
they had themselves produced. So presently I came to realize
that poets too do not make what they make by wisdom
[Weisheit], but by a kind of native disposition [Naturgabe] or
divine inspiration [Eingeistung] , exactly like seers and
prophets. 43

The German given in square brackets is that of Schleiermacher, whose

commentary and translation appeared in volume 2 (1805).44 Socrates
speaks here of sophia ("wisdom"), not of sophrosyne, and
Schleiermacher thus translates it Weisheit, not Besonnenheit; and
Schleiermacher translates physei as Naturgabe ("natural gift"), not as
Genialitiit. The passage is nevertheless useful to our discussion in
enforcing the separation of rationality from artistic insight, and in
confirming with caustic clarity the superordinacy of the former over the
latter.
This is how far the trail takes me. To summarize: The external
biographical evidence identifies channels of communication through
which Hoffmann might have been influenced by Schleiermacher's
method of interpretation. Internal textual evidence establishes at least
one certainty: that Hoffmann knew Plato's Symposium, though not
necessarily before 1814. Finally, Schleiermacher's repeated use of
Besonnenheit in 1805, and Hoffmann's in 1810, to express remarkably
similar concepts, is strikingly suggestive. At the same time, I have
found no instances of direct textual borrowing from, or parallel

43Apology, 22B-C, quoted from The Dialogues o/Plato, vol. 1, Euthyphro, Apology,
Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus, trans. R. E. Allen (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1984), 84.

44"Des Sokrates Vertheidigung," vol. 1, pt. 2 (1805), 179-229, the passage in

question being p. 197. The Apology is placed in an appendix ("Anhang zur Ersten
Abteilung der Werke des Platon"), because of Schleiermacher's doubts about its Platonic
authenticity.
Bent, Plato-Beethoven 31
readings with, Plato's Charmides.
My positivist pursuit of proof has ended inconclusively, without the
sought-for indisputable link-I was right to hold out no high hope of
success.
The lack of textual dependency is all the more disappointing because
an alternative hypothesis has been on the table since 1977. Peter
Schnaus, who in his study E. T. A. Hoffmann as Reviewer of Beethoven
for the "Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung" conducted an examination
of Hoffmann's language,45 suggested a parallelism with Jean Paul's
School for Aesthetics of 1804. Course 3 of the fifteen courses making
up this work is entitled' 'On Genius," and the second section (§ 12) of
Course 3 is "Besonnenheit." This section, which briefly discusses
Plato's own control of genius in the Phaedrus and the Republic, without
entering into the substance of any of the Dialogues, offers this series of
metaphors in illustration of Richter's idea:

[The poet] must simultaneously cast flames upon the least detail
and apply a thermometer to the flames; he must in the battle
heat of all his faculties maintain the subtle balance of single
syllables and must ... lead the stream of his perceptions to the
debouchement of a rhyme. Inspiration produces only the whole;
calmness produces the parts. 46

The passage to which Schnaus draws attention is the following:

Nun gibt es eine hohere Besonnenheit, die, welche die innere

Welt seIber entzweit und entzweiteilt in ein Ich und in dessen
Reich, in einen Schopfer und dessen Welt. Diese gottliche
Besonnenheit ist so weit von der gemeinen unterschieden wie

45Peter Schnaus, E. T. A. Hoffmann als Beethoven-Rezensent der Allgemeinen

Musikalischen Zeitung (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1977), 80-83; reported in
Charlton and Clarke, 18.

46Vorschule der Aesthetik, trans. Margaret R. Hale as Horn of Oberon: Jean Paul
Richter's "School for Aesthetics" (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973), 37.
32 Indiana Theory Review Vol. 16
Vernunft von Verstand, eben die Eltern von beiden. 47

(Then there is a higher reflectiveness which divides and

separates the inner world itself into two parts, into a self and its
realm, into a creator and his world. This divine reflectiveness
is as far from the common kind as reason is from understanding,
for these are their respective parents.)48

To this passage there is no single direct parallelism in Hoffmann's

review, but two phrases perhaps recall it:
49
. die hohe Besonnenheit des Meisters .
50
. Er trennt sein Ich von dem innern Reich der Tone .

( ... high reflectiveness of the master ...

. . he separates his self from the inner realm of sounds ... )

The difficulty that now faces me is pointed up by the fact that

Schleiermacher's first use of Besonnenheit in his Plato translation,
within the Protagoras, was published in the very same year as Jean
Paul's School: 1804. Jean Paul could have taken the word over from
Schleiermacher; Schleiermacher could have taken it from Jean Paul; or
their two usages could have come from a common source, or even
from mutual communication. We may never know; lines of influence
are liable to become ever more ramified rather than being solved.
What we can say, for what it is worth, is that Jean Paul refers twice to
Schleiermacher in the School, and on both occasions in conjunction

47Schnaus, 81.

48 Horn of Oberon: Jean Paul Richter's "School for Aesthetics, " trans. Hale, 36.

49AmZ, 12, col. 634.

50Ibid., cols. 633-34.

Bent, Plato-Beethoven 33
with Plato, for example:

The same [that they are exemplary, as are Goethe's Propyliien

and Wilhelm Meister] is true of the few works by the keen,
ironical, generous great-great, etc., grandson of Plato,
Schleiermacher. 51

However, it is to Schleiermacher's Critique of All Previous Ethics, of

1803, that Richter refers in a footnote at that point.
It is time to abandon my positivistic search as hopeless, and finally
to rest my case. Let me admit the power of verstehen, postulate the
commonality of purpose and method of Schleiermacher and Hoffmann
in their two enterprises, and at the same time suggest that the Fifth
Symphony was a special case in Hoffmann's mind: a work so lofty that
it prompted a special approach, a special method of treatment. The very
adoption of the hermeneutic method may itself have been a rhetorical
device, a means of saying implicitly that Beethoven's symphony needed
no more defense or justification than did Plato's Dialogues-that while
interpretation might reveal a clear structure beneath the complex and
baffling surface, the work was already as unassailable as that
masterpiece from the fourth century Be.

51Ibid., 286.