Musikandacht

The notion of »Musikandacht,« or musical meditation, reveals that musical experience in bourgeois life has always possessed a religious character. Martin Fritz outlines the origins of this notion in the age of Pietism and Enlightenment (Klopstock, Niemeyer, Reichardt, Herder) and traces its progression through romanticism (Wackenroder, Schleiermacher, Hoffmann) to idealism (Hegel). In doing so, Fritz revises the concept of »absolute music« (Dahlhaus), suggesting that, in addition to pure instrumental music, vocal church music has an equally pivotal function in musical art religion, or »Kunstreligion«.