Note 389 — Chapter II
Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston translation
By verständige Formen Hegel means, of course, forms that express an artistic, that is, an intelligible purpose. The whole passage is not very clearly expressed. The general meaning is, however, that as architecture surrounds its statues with a medium of material environment co-ordinated by artistic design and invention, so, too, music in its medium of emotional content is equally indefinite and may be used as an accompaniment (as architecture is a kind of accompaniment to statuary) in the melodic play of its harmonies to definite ideas in uttered speech. The reader of Browning will doubtless recollect the fine use made of architecture as metaphorical illustration in the poem "Abt Vogler." I think it was Schopenhauer who first spoke of architecture as frozen music. But Schelling speaks of it in the same way.