 Hanslick’s brief treatise On the Musically Beautiful (1854) is one of the most influential works in history of musical aesthetics. The work gives a concise and persuasive formulation of the cardinal tenets of formalism. The book opens with a series of arguments against what he calls “the aesthetics of feeling” (Hanslick 1854 [2018]: chapter 1). This is the Romantic conception of music as concerned with the representation and arousal of emotions. The negative part of Hanslick’s work establishes that music cannot represent feelings, and that music’s arousal of feelings, while possible, is irrelevant to its aesthetic appreciation. Hanslick’s positive thesis is that the appreciation of music involves the intellect (Geist) rather than the emotions, as music’s only content is its form.