Form/content

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've just finished reading Eric Hobsbawm's "The age of capital 1848-1875". In the chapter on the arts, I found this (to me, extraordinary) statement:

"Nothing is more surprising to mid-twentieth-century generations, educated in a very different critical dogma, than the mid-nineteenth-century belief that in the arts form was unimportant, content paramount."

I really must be out of step, because I've always thought that content was paramount. And I've always thought that this was Hobsbawm's view of jazz.

Discuss

MG

[Guy Berger]

I assume this is the clash between neoclassicism (mid 20th century) and romanticism (19th century).

Guy