CPE Bach’s Fantasia in F Sharp Minor and the 18th Century Sublime
This is going to be an essay about how CPE Bach’s Fantasia in F Sharp Minor could relate to some of the 18th century ideas of the sublime. In the eighteenth century, there were a lot of differing ideas as to what, exactly, the sublime entailed. I shall mostly be concerning myself with those of Edmund Burke, as written in “A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin Of Our Ideas Of The Sublime And Beautiful”, though many of the other ones are also of great academic merit, especially those of Joseph Addison and Immanuel Kant. I read in an article that Burke proposed that all range of human feeling could be categorised as either sublime or beautiful. Whilst that article appears to have gotten the wrong idea, Burke was the first to say in writing that the sublime was something that could be experienced by all of our senses, and not just those of sight and sound. If one believes that music has the capacity to be sublime, and they believe, as Burke did, in the dichotomy between the sublime and the beautiful, then one might well be inclined to automatically declare the free fantasia as sublime and be done with it. This fantasia, as well as its counterpart arranged to include a solo violin part, were never formally published …show more content…
And this piece of music, whilst more free than most of its time, is still beautiful, even after considering the sublime. It’s still small, still polished, still light and delicate. Beauty too, can be overwhelming, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As mentioned in a previous paragraph, I do believe music capable of representing the sublime, but I’m not sure this piece, or the free fantasia in general, even does that. It’s not “rugged and negligent” - Bach keeps going back to the same theme, and he plays an ordinary instrument using established techniques, whilst utilising styles which don’t sound like anything other than vaguely classical to the untrained
This is going to be an essay about how CPE Bach’s Fantasia in F Sharp Minor could relate to some of the 18th century ideas of the sublime. In the eighteenth century, there were a lot of differing ideas as to what, exactly, the sublime entailed. I shall mostly be concerning myself with those of Edmund Burke, as written in “A Philosophical Inquiry Into The Origin Of Our Ideas Of The Sublime And Beautiful”, though many of the other ones are also of great academic merit, especially those of Joseph Addison and Immanuel Kant. I read in an article that Burke proposed that all range of human feeling could be categorised as either sublime or beautiful. Whilst that article appears to have gotten the wrong idea, Burke was the first to say in writing that the sublime was something that could be experienced by all of our senses, and not just those of sight and sound. If one believes that music has the capacity to be sublime, and they believe, as Burke did, in the dichotomy between the sublime and the beautiful, then one might well be inclined to automatically declare the free fantasia as sublime and be done with it. This fantasia, as well as its counterpart arranged to include a solo violin part, were never formally published …show more content…
And this piece of music, whilst more free than most of its time, is still beautiful, even after considering the sublime. It’s still small, still polished, still light and delicate. Beauty too, can be overwhelming, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As mentioned in a previous paragraph, I do believe music capable of representing the sublime, but I’m not sure this piece, or the free fantasia in general, even does that. It’s not “rugged and negligent” - Bach keeps going back to the same theme, and he plays an ordinary instrument using established techniques, whilst utilising styles which don’t sound like anything other than vaguely classical to the untrained