Kant and Music

Here is a great quote that ties together Kant's odd view of music (compared to Hegel, who thinks it is extremely, extremely boring and abstract) and his theory of beauty. Beauty is what can be musical for Kant:

There are two kinds of beauty; free beauty or merely dependent beauty. The first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith. The first is called the (self-subsistent) beauty of this or that thing; the second, as dependent upon a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to objects which come under the concept of a particular purpose. (this is the beauty that is not pure according to Kant--real beauty is pure, is only a matter of sensibility and not understanding at all, mj). Flowers are free natural beauties. Hardly any one but a botanist knows what sort of thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognizing in the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no regard to this naural purpose if he is passing judgement on the power by Taste. There is then at the basis of this judgement no perfection of any kind, no internal purposiveness, to which the collection of the manifold (the varying sensuous input that the flower gives us, mj) is referred. Many birds (such as the parrot, the humming bird, the bird of paradise), and many sea shells are beauties in themselves, which do not belong to any object determined in respect of its purpose by concepts, but please freely and in themselves. So also delineations a la grecque, foliage for borders or wall-papers, mean nothing in them selves; they represent nothing (THIS IS KEY!, mj)--no Object under a definite concept--and are free beauties. We can refer to the same class what are called in music phantasies (i.e. pieces without any theme), and in fact all music without words.
-Critique of Judgement §16.