Abstract

This chapter offers a short biography of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and addresses his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Schleiermacher was born on November 21, 1768. He married Henriette von Willich in 1809 and died in Berlin on February 2, 1834. Schleiermacher dealt with the first complex of questions of philosophy in his Dialectic, or the Art of Doing Philosophy and with the second in his Ethics and Outlines of a Critique of the Existing Theory of Morals. He was concerned with individuality and the individual. His central concept was feeling. He made poetry the high point of his system of art. He also expressly recognized free instrumental music as a great art. His thought was especially significant for the musical culture of his own time; it formulated opinions that also determined compositional practice.