Music and the shape of the dialectic: what Hegel’s discussion of Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau shows

Abstract

This paper discusses the prominence given by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, to Diderot’s Neveu de Rameau. It locates its cause in the dialogue’s account of the quarrel in contemporary French music, between Italian opéra comique and French opera seria, in particular, Rameau. Hegel makes his account of this section of Diderot’s dialogue his first clearly explicit account of a dialectic operating in culture. The French audiences cannot hear the French style of opera with innocent ears, having once taken pleasure in the Italian operas. And movement forward in music, it is implied, will have to go beyond both styles, to please the current audiences.