Empfindsam

Empfindsam is a German adjective meaning sensitive, tender, or susceptible. In 18th-century German culture, the term is tied to two related concept groups: Empfindsamkeit (sensibility) and the Empfindsamer Stil (the sensitive style). It denotes a taste for vivid emotion, spontaneity, and sincere inner feeling, often contrasted with more formal or ornate styles of the time.

In music, the Empfindsamer Stil flourished in the mid-18th century in German-speaking regions. It emphasizes immediacy of expression, sudden mood changes, and expressive melodic contour, sometimes using chromatic harmony and agogic accents to depict inner states. The style aimed to reflect personal feelings rather than external pomp, and it helped bridge late Baroque practice toward early Classicism and Romantic expressiveness. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is one of the best-known exponents associated with the empfindsamer approach, particularly in his keyboard works; other composers of the period are also linked to the movement.

In literature, Empfindsamkeit signified a shift toward direct emotional expression, subjectivity, and spontaneity in poetry and prose. Works often favored lyric intensity, intimate voice, and, at times, epistolary forms. The movement intersected with Enlightenment ideas while prioritizing inner experience over formal rhetoric, contributing to a broader cultural trend toward individual feeling.

Legacy: Today, empfindsam is primarily a historical descriptor used by musicologists and literary historians to categorize a distinct 18th-century aesthetic. In modern German, empfindsam remains an ordinary adjective meaning emotionally sensitive.