Ritter’s Musical Esthetics, Der Freischütz, and the Certainty of Nature in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany1

Abstract

Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a German physicist, philosopher, and chemist, who researched “invisible light” or the area beyond the visible light spectrum. Equal to his scientific interest in invisible light, Ritter was also fascinated with music, most especially the visualization of sound via the vibration plates of Ernst Chladni. This article presents Ritter’s musical esthetics in relation to the sound of nature in Carl Maria von Weber’s romantic opera Der Freischütz, which premiered in 1821 at the newly-built Königliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. By connecting Ritter’s musical esthetics with that found in Der Freischütz, the opera can be seen as something more than a simple light work for entertainment or even a mere German nationalist text: an imaginative way of perceiving the inner workings of nature as a space of renewal and life-affirming certainty.