In the 1870s, both August Wilhelm Ambros and Ferdinand Peter Graf Laurencin worked as reviewers of music in Vienna: Ambros had regularly been writing for the Wiener Zeitung since 1872, and Laurencin was, among other things, a Viennese correspondent for the newly established music journal Dalibor in Prague. The reviews by these two authors illustrate their respective approach to music aesthetics in the wake of their famous public responses to Hanslick’s treatise On the Musically Beautiful in the 1850s. Moreover, a comparison of Ambros’s and Laurencin’s reviews points to significant differences between music criticism in Vienna as opposed to Prague. In fact, Ambros’s and Laurencin’s Viennese reviews challenge the classification of the two authors as anti-formalist opponents of Hanslick: This fact becomes particularly evident in Ambros’s criticism. Not only did Ambros show broad open-mindedness in view of Brahms’s music, but he also wrote an enthusiastic review on the fourth revision of Hanslick’s treatise. Even Laurencin, who undeniably tended towards idealistic aesthetics, does not accord with the classification as “Wagnerian.” Thus it can be concluded that the music aesthetics in the second half of the 19th century were considerably more complex than the common binary narrative of Wagnerians versus anti-Wagnerians suggests.

19th century; Aesthetics; Ambros, August Wilhelm; Formalism; Hanslick, Eduard; Laurencin, Ferdinand Peter Graf ; Music criticism; Vienna

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Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies