James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer Holderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures all born in 1770 developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in...

James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer Holderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures all born in 1770 developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in...