Enlightened Sensibility: A Musical History

The eighteenth century, historians have increasingly recognized, could not be interpreted solely as the Age of Reason, for the Enlightenment’s guiding force was not only reason but also sensibility. If sensibility was a dominating force of the Enlightenment, how did music fit into the discourse, especially when the Enlightenment remains a subject of much disagreement? Music in general does not occupy the spotlight of the historiography of Enlightenment—and yet, eighteenth-century thinkers across philosophical, political, medical, religious, literary, and artistic realms had integrated a variety of musical imageries and concepts into their writing to articulate their understandings of sensibility and its nature, mechanism, and effects. These musical accounts and narratives, prevalent in philosophical works, physiological treatises, political critiques, sentimental novels, religious poetry, and even sermons, also prove music’s capacity to expound complex concepts. In current studies of sensibility, however,
scholars including musicologists have overlooked these many musical thoughts and narratives. Musicologists who work in the intersection of music and the history of sensibility tend to isolate itself from other disciplines in eighteenth-century studies by categorizing sensibility as both a musical period (Empfindsamkeit) and a stylistic term (empfindsamer Stil), associated mostly with the keyboard music of C.P.E. Bach and his German contemporaries. Such readings, which have marginalized the role of philosophy, have been challenged due to their inconsistencies that conflict with historical literature.
Sensibility, as eighteenth-century writing demonstrates, remains fundamentally a personal disposition that renders humans sensitive to feelings, all the while informing our moral and aesthetic judgment, without being restricted to one specific musical genre, form, or composer. Resurrecting the silenced musical language in eighteenth-century writing on sensibility—which Enlightened Sensibility: A Musical History seeks to accomplish as a monograph project—thus proves urgent. It offers new opportunities to reconsider both the ways music participated in the culture of sensibility and the role of sensibility in history. It also encourages the ongoing discussion on what the Enlightenment was and is—and, in recasting the role of sensibility in history, readers are also invited to reflect on the benefits of sensibility on both the individual and the social levels today.