Abstract

The dissertation focuses on the independent, yet parallel achievements of four representative figures at the beginning of the Romantic period: Holderlin, Hegel, Wordsworth, and Beethoven. Detailed analysis of their later works reveals that music became a central metaphor for self-consciousness in Idealist philosophical aesthetics, which in turn led several major practicing composers and poets to incorporate the concept of self-consciousness into their own work through musical structures. The four principal chapters of the dissertation analyze works which clearly demonstrate this turning point within their individual genres: Wordsworth's Prelude, Holderlin's later poetry, Hegel's Vorlesungen uber die Asthetik, and Beethoven's late quartets