This thesis explores music as an art form, in the context of the socioeconomic period of industrialization, where all things, including art, were increasingly commodified. This work is particularly fixed around the 1890s, a moment in which writers, philosophers, and musicians propelled the notion of music as a transcendent art form. In this thesis, I argue that Europe’s nineteenth century was a particularly crucial literary moment for evaluating the state of music as an art form. I argue this in order to demonstrate music’s paradoxical status in such a time of commodification, production, and industrialized labor.