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

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.