A Christian Art? Søren Kierkegaard’s Views on Music and Musical Performance Reconsidered

Abstract While the only extensive discussion of music in Kierkegaard’s work is the famous treatise based on Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni in the first part of the pseudonymous Either/Or (1843), Kierkegaard did write other brief passages, in which he made comments on musical aspects. Two recent articles have pointed to attitudes toward music in such passages which seem to differ from the negative evaluation of music as a religious or theological medium in the first part of Either/Or by the fictitious aesthete A. With a point of departure in the two mentioned articles, I attempt to further discuss the possible relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic in Kierkegaard’s musical thought, involving passages from both parts of Either/Or as well as a few journal-entries. Finally, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s distinction between staging and performativity is brought to bear on these issues.