Hanslick, Legal Processes and Scientific Methodologies: How Not to Construct an Ontology of Music

Hanslick's treatise On the Beautiful in Music (1854) is often taken to be a paradigm of 'scientific' and 'formalist' explanations of music. This article demonstrates that many of his key ideas came from Hanslick's legal training with its 'laws' based on 'rulings' rather than universal principles. That training also caused him to organise his treatise as if conducting a courtroom defence, with its emphasis on negative rebuttal and a verdict of 'not guilty as charged'. Finally, arising from his observations on musical performance, a new theory of the ontology of music is adumbrated.