Enlightenment

(Ger. Aufklärung).

A movement in 18th-century thought dedicated to raising the level of general education by combating superstition and inherited prejudices, and by placing human betterment above preoccupation with the supernatural. ‘The proper study of mankind is man’ (Pope, Essay on Man, 1733). The movement’s origins are placed in English empiricism (Locke, Newton), French rationalism (Descartes, who was greatly admired for his clarity of expression and critical methods) and French scepticism (Bayle). Key figures in the diffusion of what was quite early called ‘les lumières’ were Montesquieu (Lettres persanes, 1721; L’esprit des lois, 1748); Voltaire, whose stay in England during the 1720s led to the eloquent defence of humanitarian ideals in the Lettres philosophiques (1734); and Diderot, who was the organizing genius behind the Encyclopédie (1751–72). In Italian letters Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame (1737), written under Voltaire’s aegis, is regarded as a typical specimen of ‘illuminismo’; it imparted scientific concepts in easy and graceful form, after the model of Fontenelle’s Eloges des académiques (1729; see illustration). Voltaire praised Algarotti’s work for achieving the Horatian ideal of ‘instructing with delight’. Burney sang the praises of another Italian author in the same terms: ‘A true poet, says Horace, unites the sweetness of verse with the utility of his precepts: and no author has penetrated so far into the refinement of the art as Metastasio’.

In Germany similar stirrings came to the fore in the popular philosophy of Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing who, following Diderot’s example, produced bourgeois dramas intended to raise the moral tone of society. The founding of the various ‘national’ theatres in Germany and Austria sprang from a desire to improve both society and the vernacular language, the latter goal a vehicle towards achieving the former. Attempts at social reform along humanitarian lines reached a highpoint in the Vienna of Joseph II. The epitome of German enlightened thought was Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781). Kant gave wide currency to the term itself with an essay ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’ (1784); his answer was couched as an exegesis of another Horatian precept: ‘Sapere aude!’.

French Rococo art of the earlier 18th century represented an attempt to lighten the burden of grandeur left by the colossal undertakings, the superhuman scale of Louis XIV. Its emphasis upon a light and airy gracefulness was not without parallels in French music, particularly opéra-ballet, a genre to which Rameau contributed some of his finest work. His Indes galantes (1735) opened a sympathetic perspective on other cultures, while his Fêtes d’Hébé (1739) celebrated the mutual dependence of the sister arts in liberating the human spirit. Pastorales such as Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore (1753) achieved an informal but elegant simplicity that typified the age of Louis XV.

In Italian opera the Arcadian reform of the libretto brought a turning away from the labyrinthine and often lurid plots of the 17th century towards simpler dramas, where human conflicts were paramount, and the intervention of superhuman powers rare (see Opera, §IV). Metastasio combined utmost clarity and beauty of expression with a ‘douce morale’ (as Goldoni put it) – qualities specially prized by his contemporaries, who saw his dramas as a school of virtue. The delicate melodies, at once tender and passionate, with which such composers as Vinci, Pergolesi and Hasse clothed his verse spoke to the hearts of sensitive souls everywhere, and account in large part for the vogue of the galant in music, and for Empfindsamkeit. Goldoni achieved comparable stature in comic opera. His realism and his gentle satire of social mores were no less motivated by the double ideal of entertainment and improvement. His librettos, when set by masters like Galuppi and Piccinni, raised mid-century opera buffa to a level that inspired the creators of opéra-comique, and both genres affected the creation of German Singspiel. Gluck synthesized the comic and serious, both French and Italian, in reconstituting music drama along simpler, more elementally human lines, beginning with Orfeo ed Euridice (1762).

The international acceptance of Italian opera by critics and arbiters of taste was facilitated to no small degree by the literary polish lent by librettists as skilful as Metastasio and Goldoni, and by their successful application of the ‘utile et ductiles’ aesthetic. Scheibe applied the latter standard even to instrumental music, as when he posed the question: ‘Who can listen to a Graun or Hasse symphony without pleasure and benefit?’. Answer: no-one in north Germany at that time, or at least no-one who shared the tastes of Frederick II of Prussia, including C.P.E. Bach. Frederick’s ideals were enlightened (to the extent that circumstances allowed) and provided an example to other rulers who were important patrons of music, including Catherine of Russia, Carl Theodor of the Palatinate and Bavaria, and Joseph II of Vienna.

Diffusion of culture was one of the main goals of enlightened thought; it affected music in various ways. The public concert was largely an 18th-century invention. Increasingly large theatres were built to accommodate an increasing public for spectacles and concerts. Handel’s oratorios were directed mainly at a middle-class audience. The production of music for the fashionable amateur to perform at home became a veritable industry. Much of the instrumental music in the galant style arose in answer to the needs of the ‘Galantuomo’. Production of musical instruments, especially keyboard instruments, reached levels that had not been approached since the 16th century, a resurgence paralleled in the history of music printing. The immense output of songs with simple accompaniments or no accompaniment at all (the sentimental romance and ballade were typical) was destined for amateur circles; so were the unending volumes of keyboard arrangements devoted to operas, oratorios and other concerted music. Self-tutors in all aspects of music did not originate in the 18th century, but there was a new quantity and diversity of publications available. The historiography of music begun by Burney and others sought to foster, as well as to record, the progress of civilization.

The anti-rational and even anti-intellectual bias that set in as a counter-current during the third quarter of the century assumed vehement expression as early as 1750, in Rousseau’s Discours sur les sciences et les arts, where civilization was attacked for having corrupted primitive virtue. Such an about-turn shocked many a sensibility raised on the essential optimism of enlightened thought. Gloom and pessimism, along with terror of the unknown, became a counter-cultural fashion. In the visual arts they found expression in shipwrecks, prisons and nightmares. In literature, and by way of drama with some extensions into music, they found potent expression in German ‘Sturm und Drang’.

French aesthetics managed to accommodate both currents. Diderot encouraged poets, painters and composers to be ‘sombre and savage’. Conflict between the rational and the emotional, so dear to later ‘Romantics’, was put down as a false dichotomy. The seemingly disparate claims of the heart and the mind were held instead to be complementary, as in the Encyclopédie (article ‘Foible’): ‘in the measure that the mind acquires more enlightenment [lumières] the heart acquires more passion [sensibilité]’. The interdependence of passion and reason was one of the main legacies of French 18th-century thought. Berlioz subscribed to a similar aesthetic, as when he wrote of his idol Gluck that he worshipped that master’s works with ‘un culte passionné, quoique raisonné, je l’espère’.

One of the recurrent images accompanying enlightened thought was that of the sun piercing the clouds of superstition and error. It characterized much philosophic writing from Diderot, through Raynal, to Condorcet, whose final paean to human perfectability was achieved in Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1794). Only after this point, with the onset of the Reign of Terror, and the reactions that it unleashed, was there a decisive rejection of the idealism represented by the ‘lumières’.

Music does not lack parallels. The most striking come by way of the theatre. A turning back from the excessive preoccupation with the darker side of life and the frankly anti-social irrationality of ‘Sturm und Drang’ marked the last two decades of the century. Goethe led the way towards an affirmation of earlier ideals about human perfectibility, towards a balance between objective and subjective forces in art. His return to more universal standards gave rise to the notion of a ‘Classical’ era, which has since passed to music. Analogies are not lacking between his mature achievements and the Olympian works of Mozart’s last decade or Haydn’s most mature masterpieces. There are other reasons why the greatest works of Mozart and Haydn may be considered not only ‘Classical’ but enlightened. Both masters, together with Goethe and Joseph II, became freemasons and subscribed to the masonic ideals of universal brotherhood and the liberating power of knowledge. The symbolic role that light assumes in Die Zauberflöte has its parallel in the resounding ‘Fiat lux’ of The Creation, which, along with The Seasons, expresses serene confidence in a man-centred and divinely blessed universe. These sublime works provided the century with a ‘lieto fine’ consistent with its highest ideals.

See also Classical; Empfindsamkeit; Galant; Rococo; and Sturm und Drang.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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DANIEL HEARTZ