What is the use of aesthetics if they can neither teach how to produce beauty nor how to appreciate it in good taste? It exists because it behooves rational human beings to provide reasons for their actions and assessments. Even if aesthetics are not the mathematics of beauty, they are the proof of the calculation.
Franz Grillparzer
NUMINOUS PARTICLES: ON THE AESTHETICS OF MUSICAL MEANING
What do we claim in saying that a musical detail “has” meaning or “is” meaningful? What kind of detail? What sort of meaning? Does there exist an “aesthetics” of meaning in the sense that the meaning becomes apparent in sensory, sensuous, or material form? In what form? In what sense apparent? We will address these questions both in theory, at the intersection of hermeneutics and aesthetics, and in practice, with a close look at several musical examples drawn from the piano repertoire.
