At the Origins of Music Analysis Craig Alexander Comen New Haven, Connecticut A.B., Chemistry and Music, Bowdoin College, 2012 M.A., Music, University of Virginia, 2015 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McIntire Department of Music University of Virginia May 2019 ii © Copyright by Craig Alexander Comen All Rights Reserved May 2019 iii A B S T R AC T This dissertation chronicles the early history of music criticism over the course of the long eighteenth century, focusing on the emergence of the interpretive close-reading of musical works—what is now called music analysis, a practice ubiquitous across the academic discipline of musicology. The first music analysts were a wide-ranging group of intellectuals and critics who collectively formulated a science of music, complete with a set of scholarly practices and institutions that continues to influence scholarship today. To catalogue and evaluate new music publications, critics interpreted music’s complex structures by fracturing the compositions into parts and attempting to figure out how they related to the whole, resulting in the first structural interpretations—or, in a modern sense, a “critique”—of musical texts. Analysts carved a space for themselves in the emergent disciplinary discourse of musicology, establishing and developing the proprietary knowledge necessary for rationalizing music as a coherent system and playing a pivotal role in establishing its new epistemology. The study tells the story of the ways in which eighteenth-century critics developed a systematic way of interpreting musical works, and reveals their initial attempts to be far more sophisticated than previously acknowledged. Critics sought to relate musical structure to expression, linking technical concepts recognizable in contemporary music theory to musical meaning. The narrative combines concerns from the fields of cultural history, philosophy, and literary criticism in order to highlight the rich intellectual and cultural contexts surrounding this pivotal moment in the history of musical thought. The narrative begins with French, English, and German music critics of the early Enlightenment, proceeds to trace the intellectual and cultural aspirations of mid-century iv German musical life and its burgeoning publishing industry, and concludes with the reflective criticism arising from the aesthetic movement of early Romanticism. My first chapter establishes the variety of critical strands in Germany, France, and England that emerged around the turn of the eighteenth century, all seeking to understand and regulate musical structure in the wake of a panoply of new styles and genres in a newly secularized musical culture. The critics involved were the first to account for musical particularity and to rationalize the musical medium as a site for exhibiting the capacities of the human imagination. The second chapter traces the moment when critics first establish music analysis proper, when they take copious amounts of space to describe moments of compositions that strike them as inventive, employ specialized terms to explain components of the musical structure, and elucidate how the parts of the works relate to the whole. The final two chapters of the dissertation chronicle the development of analytical practice and its reflective turn in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Many critics began to associate analysis with philosophical concerns from aesthetic modernism and were occasionally weary to employ the practice at all. When they did employ it, they often did so to show that musical form could not successfully contain the seemingly boundless expressive capacities of the human subject. In the process, critics helped to establish models of musical structure and style that musicologists continue to engage with to this day. v A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S Hegel’s philosophy, at least filtered through J. M. Bernstein’s electrifying online lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, has confirmed something for me that I have intuitively known for some time: my dependence—though Bernstein would refer to it as a radical dependence—on the individuals and social institutions that surround me in order to fulfill basic human actions. As I’ve assembled this dissertation, I have become acutely aware of the people I depend on in my everyday affairs. The McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia has been a wonderful home for my intellectual and professional development over the past seven years. Richard Will has been a consummate advisor, shaping how I understand music historiography and having the uncanny ability to offer a sane perspective on virtually any topic, music-related or otherwise. From my first semester in graduate school, Michael Puri has gotten me to pay more attention to musical details and the arguments I employ to engage with them. Fred Maus has instilled in me a fine appreciation for the words I use in order to describe such details. Outside of the Music Department, Chad Wellmon has proved an invaluable resource for eighteenth-century intellectual history, whose research interests have undoubtedly shaped my own work. Rita Felski led an utterly masterful seminar on the methods of literary criticism that still helps me navigate the dense forest of the humanities in the academy. And years ago, Mary Hunter introduced me to musicology in a gloriously lopsided way, and I’m forever grateful for the countless hours she allowed me to spend in her office analyzing Beethoven’s piano sonatas, discussing Haydn’s style, or reading Tovey’s essays. vi In terms of colleagues, I could not even imagine how this dissertation would’ve been finished without the unfailing support of the “Family”—Amy Coddington, Jarek Ervin, and Stephanie Gunst. I would need far more space than these few pages to outline a fraction of how they’ve done this, and I’m not foolish enough to attempt it here. Vic Szabo has always been up for spirited debate about any topic, and his contrarian takes have helped to sharpen my own understanding of the discipline. Pete D’Elia and Kevin Davis have often lent a sympathetic ear to my ideas and have always responded with encouraging words. Drinks with Justin McBrien have led to some of the most enlightening conversations I’ve had about intellectual history and beyond, and have also made those jaded final years of graduate school all the more bearable. Courtney Kleftis, Aldona Dye, Kyle Chattleton, Matt Pincus, Kristina Warren, Paul Turowski, Tanner Greene, Steven Lewis, Tracey Stewart, Nick Rubin, Ian Coyle, Matt Jones, Jack Wadden, and Parker Vest have all been great friends, making Charlottesville an easier place to call home. At one point Ani Tramblian graciously answered a translation inquiry that was tremendously helpful. Beyond Charlottesville, Roger Grant has been an extraordinary resource and a lovely friend, having far more knowledge about the inner workings of musicology than almost anyone should, and always willing to provide feedback on my work or discuss eighteenth-century music history over drinks. This dissertation owes much to the collections at the University of Virginia Library, and I doubt I would ever be able to find a gatekeeper as helpful as Winston Barham. At a few crucial moments, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München and the British Library generously provided me with scans of manuscript archive material. To my profound surprise, Robin Wallace sent me unpublished translations of several Beethoven reviews that vii were invaluable for drafting my final chapter. I also owe a special thanks to Ole Hass, Susan Gillespie, and Elaine Sisman for responding to various queries about J. K. F. Triest. I’m lucky enough to have a support network that extends to folks I met long before graduate school, and here I wish to acknowledge my Bowdoin College classmates who have remained close friends, particularly Robert Flores, Doug Leonard, Katie Blue, Will Pugh, Julie Hooper, Jon Ryss, Nicole Erkis, Cal Pershan, and Ben Berg; as well as my hometown friends Dina Nathanson, Dave Johnson, Fiona Crotty, Rebecca Kagan, Mariel Updegrove, and Matthew Neville. Finally I wish to thank my family, my parents Jeffrey and Laura Comen and my brother Michael, whose love and encouragement have in countless ways provided me with the fortitude to complete my graduate program many states away from them. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ v List of Musical Examples ................................................................................................. x Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 1. Musical Ideality and Distortion on the Eve of Analysis............................................. 15 Aesthetics Ascending ............................................................................................... 18 Styles Run Amok ..................................................................................................... 26 Figures, Rhetoric, and the Musical Metaphor ........................................................... 37 Lully’s Implied Tones .............................................................................................. 47 2. Forkel, Vogler, and the Turn to Analysis ................................................................... 54 German Aesthetics .................................................................................................. 56 Damming the Musical Torrents ............................................................................... 61 Winter’s Symphony ................................................................................................. 73 Forkel’s Rondo ........................................................................................................ 84 Dissolution of the Classical Synthesis ...................................................................... 96 3. Analysis as the Pursuit of Sentimental Unity ............................................................ 99 Confronting the Fractured Present ..........................................................................101 Modern Art’s Analytical Imperative ........................................................................106 Naïve Music ...........................................................................................................110 Sentimental Music ..................................................................................................115 Modern Musical Form ............................................................................................122 Hoffmann’s Sentimental Beethoven ........................................................................132 ix 4. Romanticizing Analysis, or How to Embrace Freedom ............................................137 Analysis in Musical Life .........................................................................................140 A Freer Style ..........................................................................................................150 Analyzing Freedom ................................................................................................161 Kanne’s Mozart ......................................................................................................178 Marx’s Beethoven ...................................................................................................190 Conclusion...................................................................................................................197 Bibliography ................................................................................................................201 x LIST OF MUS ICA L EXAMPL ES Example 1.1: Lully, Armide, Act II, Scene 5, “Enfin il est en ma puissance,” mm. 18–22, with Rameau’s realization ........................................................................ 50 Example 2.1: Vogler, Example of Fortführung (mm. 2–4) and Ausführung (mm. 5–8) from Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule ............................................... 68 Example 2.2: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 1–21 ...................................... 78 Example 2.3: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 21–38 .................................... 79 Example 2.4: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 39–59 .................................... 80 Example 2.5: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 102–24 .................................. 83 Example 2.6: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 1–12 .................. 87 Example 2.7: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 28–35 ................ 91 Example 2.8: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 77–95 ................ 93 Example 3.1: Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, mvt. 4, mm. 45–49 .......135 Example 4.1: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 7 in D, Op. 10 No. 3, mvt. 4, mm. 99–107 ..............................................................................................................138 Example 4.2: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 9–22 ....................164 Example 4.3: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 23–34 ..................166 Example 4.4: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 105–17 ................168 Example 4.5: Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, mvt. 1, mm. 416–25 ..............................................................................................................172 Example 4.6: Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, mvt. 3, mm. 1–32 ..............................................................................................................174 Example 4.7: Ferdinand, Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1, mvt. 1, mm. 1–35................176 Example 4.8: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 1 in C, K. 279, mvt. 1, mm. 1–3......................180 Example 4.9: Mozart, Symphony No. 41 in C, K. 551, mvt 3, trio, mm. 1–8 .................181 xi Example 4.10: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 7 in C, K. 309, mvt. 1, mm. 1–16..................182 Example 4.11: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330, mvt. 1, mm. 1–14 ................185 Example 4.12: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330, mvt. 1, mm. 34–44 ..............187 Example 4.13: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, K. 333, mvt. 1, mm. 31–59 ........189 INTRODUCTION I. Music, which often combines the symmetry of architecture with the emotional range of drama, has the misfortune to be accurately describable only in technical terms peculiar to itself. D. F. Tovey1 Music analysis is a ubiquitous practice in academia today, freely moving across many areas of musicology. From a general perspective, it constitutes the close-reading of musical compositions. As Tovey indicates, it often requires extensive knowledge of musictheoretical terminology and an intimate understanding of style and genre in order to be convincingly employed. Yet as analysis is taught in undergraduate lecture halls, discussed in graduate seminars, and employed by scholars in their research year after year, the practice has become so widespread that it is difficult to tell exactly what it is or where it ends. It is also tough to figure out when it began. While there are several types of analysis as understood in the current disciplinary landscape, particularly as the boundaries of musicology over the past several decades have spread beyond the classical music of the Western canon, this study concerns a central form of analysis that has almost exclusively engaged with this celebrated, albeit narrow, slice of musical culture developed over the past three centuries.2 In this tradition analysis consists of two moments: dissecting a musical work into its constituent parts, and then stitching these parts back together by determining each of their individual functions within the 1 Tovey, “Some Aspects of Beethoven’s Art Forms,” 271. For an overview, see Bent and Pople, “Analysis” and Dunsby and Whittall, Music Analysis in Theory and Practice. 2 2 totality of the work. Both moments are interpretive; they reveal analysis as foundationally critical, as a humanistic enterprise to engage with a work of art in order to excavate its inner logic, its overarching design, its unique approach to balancing unity and variety, or, more fundamentally, its meaning.3 Exemplifying this approach, Charles Rosen writes: “Our expectations do not come from outside the work but are implicit in it: a work of music sets its own terms.”4 This type of analysis has long been celebrated in musical discourse, though it only found an academic home in the closing decades of the twentieth century, in musicology and especially in the newly established discipline of music theory.5 Subsequently, many branches of both fields have advanced the practice, both in terms of introducing new methods to familiar repertories and bringing time-tested analytical approaches to unfamiliar ones.6 Yet as analysis has been institutionalized in university curricula and its methods expanded and refined, it has also been contested. As early as 1980, Joseph Kerman issued an influential polemic against certain types of analysis that he found to be overly mathematical and mechanical, contending that analysis ought to maintain a distinctly subjective, humanistic stance toward its aesthetic object.7 The polemic spurred a 3 Ian Bent describes such analyses as hermeneutic, having been “imbued with the impulse to interpret rather than to describe.” Furthermore, he notes, “Their concern is with the inner life of the music rather than with its outward, audible form. They strive to transcend that outer form and penetrate the non-material interior.” Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, 1. Original italics. 4 Rosen, The Classical Style, p. xi. 5 Maus, “The Disciplined Subject of Musical Analysis,” 14. 6 See, for instance, Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style; Caplin, Webster, and Hepokoski, Musical Form, Forms, and Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections; Moore, Analyzing Popular Music. 7 Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out.” Kerman captures this stance by invoking the term “criticism,” prominently featured a few decades earlier in his “A Profile for American Musicology.” 3 series of responses, inaugurating the interrogation of analysis that continues to this day. The movement culminated in the 1990s and 2000s with a decentering of the practice as a whole and the “structural listening” it inculcated.8 In the wake of analysis’s reflective turn, scholars have looked to its history more carefully than ever. What has emerged is a fragmentary narrative that establishes the origins of analysis around the turn of the nineteenth century, highlighting a group of compositional treatises by H. C. Koch, Anton Reicha, and Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny, and the criticism of E. T. A. Hoffmann.9 The narrative is fragmentary in part because of the sub-disciplinary separations of musicology. Within the field of music theory, scholars have subsumed the history of analysis under the history of theory, mainly looking to familiar compositional treatises to tell the story. The pedagogical function of the treatises, however, tends to impart an oblique perspective into how the structure of finalized musical works was conceived. Hoffmann’s writings have offered some supplementary help here, with his inclusion in the narrative due to his practically legendary status. The critic has been a perennial figure of interest almost since the academic discipline of musicology began at the turn of the twentieth century, and today scholars still consider his 1810 essay on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony foundational for the aesthetic movement of musical romanticism and, by virtue of its technical rigor, the history of music analysis.10 Yet the 8 For responses to Kerman’s polemic, see Agawu, “How We Got out of Analysis, and How to Get Back in Again” and Guck, “Analytical Fictions.” For an influential critique of analysis, see Subotnik, “Toward a Deconstruction of Structural Listening: A Critique of Schoenberg, Adorno, and Stravinsky” and Dell’Antonio, Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing. 9 For paradigmatic accounts, see Burnham, “Form” and Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. 10 For example, see Dahlhaus, Die Musiktheorie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert; Bonds, Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven; Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought: From E. T. A. Hoffmann to Arnold Schoenberg. 4 context surrounding Hoffmann’s writings, particularly the analytical work in the reviews of his critic-contemporaries or the journalistic tradition to which they all contributed, remains elusive. This dissertation chronicles the origins of analysis in the music periodical, a distinctly eighteenth-century invention that has been overlooked as a locus of analytical thought. It uncovers the work of the first music analysts, a wide-ranging group of intellectuals and critics who collectively formulated a new science of music, which initiated a set of practices that continue to shape contemporary scholarship. These analysts developed approaches for elucidating the complexities of modern musical structure—in short, they invented a method of music analysis scholars still employ today. Stretching over a century, the narrative begins with the French, English, and German music critics of the early Enlightenment, proceeds to trace the intellectual and cultural projects of mid-century German musical life and its burgeoning publishing industry, and concludes with the reflective criticism arising from the aesthetic movement of early Romanticism. In unprecedented acts of daring interpretation, critics fractured newly published musical compositions and sutured them back up in order to reveal the music’s inner workings. They also developed their ideas in response to broader concerns in the fields of cultural history, philosophy, and literary criticism, initiating a tradition whose origins are both earlier and richer than previously thought. 5 II. The narrative of the origins of analysis often predicates itself on the claim that analysis itself became an autonomous discipline, as with musicology, only about a century ago. According to Jonathan Dunsby and Arnold Whittall: The kind of analysis we would nowadays recognize as “technical” has been in practice for more than two centuries. Yet it came to be regarded as a discipline apart from compositional theory only at the turn of [the twentieth] century. Around this time, the relationship between traditional analysis and compositional theory ceased to be significantly reflexive.11 The implicit assumption here is that analysis required the academy to flourish in its own right. Following Ian Bent, this study challenges the idea that analysis needed the academy to be established, and that the division between analysis and compositional theory—at least as Dunsby and Whittall conceptualize it—occurs far earlier.12 A central claim of this study is that analysis became an intelligibly distinct tradition the moment when music itself became an object of knowledge during the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment period. The bearer of this transformation was print culture: it was in encyclopedias, lexica, monographs, and periodicals where figures sought to carve a space for a science of music by pursuing the question of what music was and how it operated. These documents became the venue for a mode of inquiry distinct from that of pedagogy. Not only did they serve a different function, but their agents of creation and consumption looked different as well: the authors were often critics instead of composers, and the intended readership typically comprised connoisseurs, fueled by an emergent 11 Dunsby and Whittall, Music Analysis in Theory and Practice, 62. Noting that many analytical documents of the nineteenth century were found primarily in journals, Bent challenges Dunsby and Whittall, claiming that the moment of division between analysis and compositional theory occurs “at least as early as 1830.” Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, p. xiv. 12 6 bourgeois leisure class. More broadly, music was among many nascent disciplines formulated in the high Enlightenment, whose flood of print documents fractured, in Chad Wellmon’s words, “the imagined unity and homogeneity of the empire of erudition.”13 In the wake of this fracturing of knowledge, scholars sought to understand disciplines separately, to comprehend each as a self-organizing body of knowledge.14 Analysis, then, served a role in disciplining music and formulating musicology long before it was institutionalized as a university department.15 Once music criticism became an enterprise in its own right, and once the idea of a periodical that dealt with all matters exclusively musical—the music journal—became a reality with Johann Mattheson in the early eighteenth century, the practice of analysis flourished. In the music journal, critics began to take up newly published compositions, and they reached to analysis as a way to evaluate them. In this sense many of the first music analysts were critics; they sought unpack how a composition was constructed, how its parts related to the whole, how its techniques helped to vary or unify the totality. Across the array of music periodicals from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, critics employed analysis time and time again to make sense of music as a legitimate object of study. 13 Wellmon, Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University, 64. 14 On the cultural phenomenon of self-organization, see Sheehan and Wahrman, Invisible Hands: Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century. 15 Scholars from a few generations ago already observed the foundational role of the period for the discipline, particularly in the work of J. N. Forkel, himself a lecturer at the University of Göttingen. See, for instance, Duckles, “Johann Nicolaus Forkel: The Beginning of Music Historiography.” 7 To place the journal at the center of the origins of analysis reveals another perspective as well. Recently, scholars have brought attention to material culture of music history and the “actions” or “agents” it produces, a consideration often concealed by human subject–oriented narratives. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s writings on Actor-Network Theory, for example, Benjamin Piekut argues that accounts of the celebrated midnineteenth-century music periodical, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, ought to probe beyond its famous editor, K. F. Brendel: A conventional framing of Brendel as the real actor and the NZfM as a mere tool . . . risks overlooking the ways the wider network constrains and enables human action. How many copies of NZfM were printed? Who bought them? How were they disseminated across Europe? Where did they fail to reach? In what ways was the spread of the New German School therefore uneven?16 The story of early music analysis, then, must consider the journal itself as a physical object, one whose material properties mediate the entire narrative of the origins of the practice. Laurel Brake embraces this approach when she calls on scholars to take note of “journalism networks” in order to better grasp “the formats of what we read, how production and functions shape the artefact, and how the technic, along with the editorial, graphic, and advertising content and the authorial and editorial interventions, supplements 16 Piekut, “Actor-Networks in Music History: Clarifications and Critiques,” 196–97. While Piekut’s line of questioning highlights productive research pathways, the methodology behind it risks reducing to what media scholars call “technological determinism,” that is, in this case the claim that the journalistic medium itself contained inherent qualities that dictated the terms of its production and consumption. See, for instance, Press and Williams, The New Media Environment: An Introduction. This perspective in turn obscures the broader social and economic contexts of nineteenth-century Europe, formed by the collective action of human agents who shaped not only how the periodical came to be, but the very conditions for its possibility in a nascent capitalist economic system whose formation was far from inevitable. 8 its meaning.”17 From a materialist vantage, the texts of the analytical tradition were contingent upon the page and institutions surrounding the periodicals in question. As music critics helped to effect the Enlightenment-era transformation of the cataloguing of knowledge, so too did they respond to questions pertaining to the social role of art articulated in prevailing philosophical discourse. The eighteenth century bore witness to the invention of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The field, whose name was first coined by Alexander Baumgarten, was subjected to a sustained, thorough inquiry by century’s end in the critical project of Immanuel Kant, in a legion of writings authored by almost every other major figure of the German idealist tradition, and in the enigmatic literary criticism of early German romanticism.18 For a music critic in this period to make a claim about music, they would inevitably be reacting to the same aesthetic concerns raised by contemporaneous writers on art. A central issue plaguing both aesthetics and music analysis was the very nature of how works of art were constructed. At a moment when both traditions flourished, the art work became conceptualized as a self-contained totality whose numerous parts came together to form a whole, and this part–whole relationship ultimately dictated how both music critics and philosophers approached art as a meaningful entity within the world. From a musicological perspective the part–whole relationship became the critical norm once what Lydia Goehr terms the “work-concept” was established at the twilight of the eighteenth century. Over the course of approximately several decades, music’s social status transitioned from an entity defined by its religious and aristocratic functions in the 17 Brake, “‘Time’s Turbulence’: Mapping Journalism Networks,” 124. See also Watt and Collins, “Critical Networks.” 18 For an accessible survey, see Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition. 9 church and court to one constituting an autonomous, secularized art whose forms were organized by a singular composer. Goehr summarizes the shift as such: Most of the changes that fostered the emergence of the regulative work-concept spanned many decades. . . . They marked a transition in practice, away from seeing music as a means to seeing it as an end. More specifically, they marked a move away from thinking about musical production as comparable to the extra-musical use of a general language that does not presuppose self-sufficiency, uniqueness, or ownership of any given expression. In place of that, musical production was now seen as the use of musical material resulting in complete and discrete, original and fixed, personally owned units. The units were musical works.19 Such a change did not happen overnight, of course, and it was not uniformly established either geographically across Europe or with respect to all types of musical practices and genres.20 Nonetheless, the type of analysis initiated by critics in this period predicated itself on some understanding of a work-concept in order to critique a work, or else the conception of analysis would fall apart. Scott Burnham observes: “The emphasis on form has been a central preoccupation of music-theoretical writings ever since the ‘work concept’ (consolidated around 1800) decisively shifted theoretical focus to whole works of music and thus to overall form. As notions of organic musical process became more prevalent, musical form became less self-evident, more in need of elucidation.”21 To accomplish an analysis of a newly published musical composition would require the critic to buy into the idea that the composition was unchangeable, an abstraction from any given performance, a text authored in its entirety by one individual. Only then would the part– whole relationship become an open question and prime any given composition for analysis. 19 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 206. See, for instance, Talbot, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? 21 Burnham, “Form,” 880. 20 10 III. This study places the origins of analysis squarely within the long eighteenth century, dividing the narrative into three distinct phases. Following G. W. F. Hegel’s aesthetic theory, particularly its tripartite historical unfolding of art, the story concentrates on a certain question that united analytical criticism throughout the period: the relation between inner musical material, or form, and outer musical signification, or meaning.22 Though understandings of form and meaning changed throughout the century, the former gradually became connected with the part–whole conceptualization of works, keys and their relations, and motivic development; while the latter, initially related to affect and language in early eighteenth-century intellectual circles, came to be associated with the imaginative capacities of the modern subject. The first chapter focuses on the first moment of this progression, when critics—prior to the ascension of the work-concept—see the domains of form and meaning as divided and fashion their writings as attempts to reconcile the gap, though there was little consensus on how this could be accomplished. Next, the second chapter explores the moment when these two domains seem harmoniously united, when the work-concept becomes regulative, and when critics understand the work as perfectly suitable for presenting form and meaning as congruous. Finally, the last two chapters chronicle when the connection severs, when critics no longer conceive of musical form as a fully able to contain meaning—the latter, in the guise of the 22 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. For valuable commentary on the historical argument in Hegel’s aesthetic theory, see Pinkard, “Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art” and Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology. 11 human imagination, became too powerful to be carried by the compositional techniques of modern music. The narrative portrays the critics as products of their own time, responding to concerns from their own socio-cultural milieus, embedded in a network of intellectual and material conditions that are often strikingly different from those of the present day. Yet, though the narrative avoids a triumphal narrative as much as possible and eschews representing the work of early analysts as primitive, it would be impossible for it to escape the fact that these analytical writings are still relevant because they lay the groundwork for a practice central to musicological inquiry today. Tempering these two perspectives, this study seeks a balance between a historicist account that contextualizes these figures and evaluates their writings on their own terms, and a genealogical one that shows how some of the most celebrated ideas about musical structure in the academy originated in criticism from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The opening chapter establishes many disparate strands of music criticism prior to the consolidation of the work-concept. At the turn of the eighteenth century, critics from Germany, France, and England collectively sought to understand musical structure in the wake of a panoply of new styles and genres in a newly secularized world. These were the first writers to account for musical particularity and to rationalize the musical medium as a site for exhibiting the capacities of the human imagination, relying on a conception that required individual compositions to warp idealized models in order to become art. A famous quarrel between Jean-Philippe Rameau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau illustrates that critics’ attempts were far from straightforward, were met with little consensus, and exposed a fraught division between musical ideality and distortion. The fault line surfaces 12 in J. A Scheibe’s discussion of the “musical metaphor” as well, wherein the critic abstracts an original melody from a composition’s embellished final product. As with Rameau’s harmony, Scheibe’s melody had to be pushed from abstraction to a corrupted realized form—from the natural to the artificial. The writings of critics prior to the ascension of analysis represent incisive attempts to conceive of music as an object of knowledge precisely at the moment when the authority of the art’s traditional institutions and practices had all but disintegrated. The second chapter traces the moment when analysis arises in the critical writings of J. N. Forkel and Abbé G. J. Vogler. In 1778 both penned reviews of musical works unprecedented in scope. Over dozens of pages in journals of their own creation, they describe moments of compositions that strike them as inventive, employ specialized terms to explain components of the musical structure, and elucidate how the parts of the works relate to the whole—indeed, they treated these new compositions as “works.” Forkel and Vogler conceptualized music’s inner structure, its form, and outer expression, its meaning, as unified domains, utilizing a Hauptsatz model to show that components like key areas and motivic development lined up with the work’s affective content. They employed analysis to demonstrate that the work compellingly synthesized music’s regulative principles and the composer’s imaginative freedom, developing these tenets in other writings in dialogue with the contemporaneous German aesthetic tradition of Kant, Lessing, Schiller, and Sulzer. The critics employed analysis unproblematically—it was a tool fully up to the task of showing a homology between music form and meaning. The third chapter explores a group of critics around the turn of the nineteenth century who worried that new music was in danger of losing its social relevance. In their 13 eyes, music had become severed from the religious practices which had formerly provided its purpose and now exhibited a mercurial style that threatened its intelligibility, leading to a host of anxieties about its role in the contemporary world. These concerns form the basis of an elegiac discourse of musical modernity, one resonating with broader philosophical concerns of the period. Taking Hoffmann’s “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” as the central text, the chapter explores how he and others sought to rehabilitate modern music in the wake of a perceived social upheaval. This rehabilitation chiefly occurred at the hands of critics, who approached the complexities of new musical works by attempting to elucidate them through analysis. Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—one of the most famous texts of analytical criticism and often portrayed as a singularity—belongs in this narrative as a characteristic attempt to secure new music’s meaning. The final chapter takes up analysis in the age of Hoffmann, in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. At this moment, analysis had lost its former glory evinced by the writings of Forkel and Vogler. Critics held a profound ambivalence about employing the practice in newly published works, often finding it to be coldly mathematical and ultimately problematic. When they did employ it, they often did so to show that musical form could not successfully contain the seemingly boundless expressive capacities of the human subject. Yet many critics were also invested in outlining a new musical style that was separate from mere decades ago in the eighteenth century, one whose features allowed for more freedom of expression—often manifested in textural complexity—than those in the styles of music of the past. The analytical documents across many journals of the period show that many of the most influential ideas about musical structure that remain in professional musicology today, such as conceptions of harmonic prolongation, key 14 relations, motivic development, and meta-narratives of forms, emerged with early nineteenth-century critics. Traveling to the early 1820s, the chapter concludes with Friedrich Kanne’s analytical writings on Mozart and A. B. Marx’s journalistic criticism on the age of Beethoven, revealing that their disagreement over how to conceptualize phrase structure constituted the first attempt at answering the still-open question of where to place Beethoven in music historiography. Ultimately, the story outlining the origins of analysis shows the practice to be engaged with sophisticated issues laid out in contemporaneous philosophical discourse, a practice established in the domain of journalism whose critics established, developed, and contested its frameworks and methods, long before it became an autonomous disciplinary practice in the twentieth-century academy that continues to endure. 1. MUSICAL IDEALITY A N A LY S I S AND DIS TORTION ON THE EVE OF Tucked in a few pages before the end of Joachim Burmeister’s 1606 treatise Musica Poetica is what is often considered to be one of the earliest instances of music analysis.1 After presenting a short account of the typical organization of a musical composition, Burmeister proceeds to examine the motet “In me transierunt irae tuae” from Orlando de Lassus’s Magnum Opus Musicum of 1604. The piece requires an “analysis” of sorts, he explains, a method that consists of five steps: Musical analysis is the examination of a piece belonging to a certain mode and to a certain type of polyphony. The piece is to be divided into its affections or periods, so that the artfulness with which each period takes shape can be studied and adopted for imitation. There are five areas of analysis: (1) investigation of the mode; (2) investigation of the melodic genus; (3) investigation of the type of polyphony; (4) consideration of the quality; (5) sectioning of the piece into affections of periods.2 The first four steps are fairly straightforward issues of categorization. The fifth step by comparison appears to be a bit more labor intensive and interpretative, analytical, even— this, scholars note, is a harbinger of what was to come centuries later. For this final step, Burmeister offers additional explanation: “Sectioning of the piece into affections means its division into periods for the purpose of studying its artfulness and using it as a model for imitation. A piece has three parts: (1) the exordium, (2) the body of the piece, (3) the 1 See, for instance, Bent and Pople, “Analysis.” Burmeister, Musical Poetics, 201. “Analysis cantilenae est cantilenae ad certum modum, certumque antiphonorum genus pertinentis, et in suas affections sive periodos, resolvendae, examen quo artificium, quo unaquaeque periodus scatet, considerari et ad imitandum assume potest. Partes analyses constituuntur quinque: (1) modi inquisition, (2) generis modulaminum, et (3) antiphonorum indagatio, (4) qualitatis consideratio, (5) resolution carminis in affectiones, sive periodos.” Burmeister, Musica Poetica, 71–72. 2 16 ending.”3 He then takes up the Lassus motet, devoting the second half of his discussion exclusively to the fifth step of his method. In it Burmeister claims that “In me transierunt” contains nine “periods,” the first of which functions as the “exordium,” the middle seven as the “body,” and the last, appropriately enough, as the “ending.” He also calls attention to the fact that each section includes a multitude of rhetorical figures, specific techniques of late Renaissance musical practice that Burmeister considered analogous to a group of devices from the Ancient Roman rhetorical tradition.4 Burmeister’s account is striking: it constitutes perhaps the first written attempt to dissect a musical composition. Yet it was not the type of work-analysis to be pioneered by J. N. Forkel and Abbé G. J. Vogler almost two centuries later (see chapter 2). Instead it exemplifies the historical period prior to the ascension of the “musical work.” For Burmeister the motet did not function as an autonomous totality abstracted from performance, and its music was essentially governed by its text: the “exordium” corresponded to the passage containing the first line of the psalm and the “ending” the last. In Burmeister’s eyes, “In me transierunt” was a clear example of a patchwork of techniques that received their meaning and comprehensibility from the domain of language. Musical 3 Burmeister, Musical Poetics, 203. “Resolutio cantilenae in affectiones est divisio cantilenae in periodos, ad disquirendum artificium, et idipsum ad imitationem convertendum. Haec tres habet partes: (1) exordium, (2) ipsum corpus carminis, (3) finis.” Burmeister, Musica Poetica, 72. 4 According to Claude Palisca, Burmeister’s account constituted a way to make sense of compositional practice as older conventions were fading away: “Many of [Burmeister’s figures] are simply constructive devices, artifices that grew out of a need to knit together the voices of a composition once the cantus firmus was abandoned as the main thread earlier in the century.” See Palisca, “Ut Oratoria Musica: The Rhetorical Basis of Musical Mannerism,” 56. For another account of how Burmeister’s commentary maps onto the musical particularities of the motet, see McCreless, “Music and Rhetoric.” 17 elements were inexorably linked with words and deployed in various ways to heighten them.5 The persistent question from Burmeister onward was how best to conceptualize musical structure. Critics and pedagogues frequently regarded the musical medium—or at least its real-world examples of musical composition—as an imperfect realization of an idealized art. The period upheld a unique understanding of the ontological status of composition: the work-concept was far from a reality, and the “work” could not be readily separated from a performance whose authorship could not easily be reduced to a singular subject. Music in practice was a semblance of music in abstraction, a vulgarized rendering of an ideal type, and the route from universal to particular was far from transparent. Critics such as Johann Mattheson and J. A. Scheibe would consider musical style essential to understanding modern compositional practice, establishing taxonomies of general style types that tenuously branched outward to particular compositions. This was a matter of debate, however, as both fought vigorously over the details of stylistic divisions. The rift between musical ideality and distortion also came to a head in period conceptualizations of melody and harmony: the former represented in Scheibe’s discussion of musical metaphors and the latter in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s landmark quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau over the merits of a monologue from Lully’s Armide. In the writings of Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Denis Diderot, and Charles Avison, there was also a collective attempt to figure out how musical structure related to the realm 5 Brian Vickers argues that Burmeister remains an unrepresentative account of Renaissance-era rhetoric as his approach almost avoids affect altogether, aligning more with medieval rhetoric. He notes: “Compared to other rhetoricians of his day Burmeister seems less interested in the language of passions, and tends to turn potentially affective devices into structural ones.” Vickers, “Figures of Rhetoric/Figures of Music?,” 37. 18 of meaning, often understood as affect and obliquely connected to the imaginative capacities of the human subject. The search for meaning in artistic media resonated with period philosophy as well, such as in Alexander Baumgarten’s influential writings which sought to provide an account of the function of the aesthetic realm within the context of modern rationalist philosophy. In the contexts of their time, then, the writings on musical structure and meaning constitute incisive attempts to make sense of music prior to the rise of analysis, to conceive of it as an object of knowledge precisely at the moment when the authority of its traditional institutions and practices had all but disintegrated. AESTHETICS ASCENDING The early eighteenth century fostered the emergence of the modern philosophical discipline of aesthetics. Most accounts consider the critical project of Kant to be the tipping point, with the 1790 publication of the third Critique as pivotal in establishing the importance of the aesthetic realm in modern life.6 Yet Kant’s project was a response to prevailing ideas formulated decades before his writings, with Baumgarten as his most famous predecessor, a German philosopher who coined the term “aesthetics” in his 1735 Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (Reflections on Poetry). Baumgarten was not alone in his quest for defining aesthetics in the first few decades of the eighteenth century. In the English- and French-speaking worlds there were probing discussions about the nature of art and beauty in various literary venues as well, such as in the 1711 Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury; the 1712 essays of Joseph Addison scattered 6 Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno, 7. 19 across several issues of his moral weekly, The Spectator; and the 1719 Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music) by Jean-Baptiste Dubos.7 Even within German aesthetic discourse alone, Baumgarten’s project followed in the immediate footsteps of the work of philosophers Christian Wolff and J. C. Gottsched, as well as the writings of the Swiss literary critics J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger.8 Baumgarten wrote Meditationes philosophicae at the age of twenty-one, a brief account and a first stab at explicating his philosophical project that would be elaborated upon later on in his Aesthetica of 1750.9 It nonetheless presents the kernel of his theory of aesthetics in the contemporary tradition of rationalism as developed and promulgated by Wolff and G. W. Leibniz. Baumgarten aimed to develop a “Wissenschaft des Schönen,” arguing for a use for beauty and art in the system of human cognitive faculties as outlined by the rationalists. In the Reflections, what is at stake for Baumgarten is not only explicating the logical principles on which poetry is based, but also carving a meaningful space for aesthetic experience in toto. Falling in line with Wolff and Leibniz, he privileged rationality and believed the world to be a logical structure that could be resolved by human reason. Since sensory perception is a lower faculty, subsumed by the abstract workings of the inner mind, poetry (and art in general) could easily be discarded 7 Guyer, “The Origins of Modern Aesthetics: 1711–35.” For an account of the German lineage, see Buchenau, The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment and Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing. 9 According to Beiser: “This short tract contains in nuce Baumgarten’s entire program and the first formulation of his science of aesthetics.” Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing, 123. See also chapter 6 of Buchenau, The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment. 8 20 altogether. Yet Baumgarten thinks there is something worthwhile about the artistic medium in providing a role for aesthetic experience: “Things known are to be known by the superior faculty as the object of logic; things perceived [are to be known by the inferior faculty, as the object] of the science of perception, or aesthetic.”10 Though it might be inferior to logic, aesthetics is still nonetheless worthy of the rational subject to consider. Baumgarten also makes clear that poetry is not true; that is, it is not bound to following the principles of logic. To show this he provides an example of a poem that clearly expounds logical fallacies, yet is nonetheless artistic: it still gives the appearance of a poem. He claims: [The philosopher] will scarcely let the verses go unchallenged though they are perfect in versification. Perhaps he himself will not know for what reason they seem worthless to him, as there is nothing to criticize either in form or content. This is the principle reason why philosophy and poetry are scarcely ever thought able to perform the same office, since philosophy pursues conceptual distinctness above everything else, while poetry does not strive to attain this, as falling outside its province.11 This broaches the concept of aesthetic autonomy, that poetry can serve a different function from philosophy, or art from reason. But what exactly was poetry’s “province”? Baumgarten specifies that poetry does not rely on distinct representations, but confused ones. These confused representations promote extensive clarity rather than the intensive clarity associated with the higher faculties of cognition, exemplifying the idea that an aesthetic object promised a manifold sensory experience. As Frederick Beiser notes: “If the virtue of intensive clarity is analysis, the virtue of extensive clarity is synthesis, the power to unite what the intellect would divide. . . . [Baumgarten] is in effect saying that poetry 10 Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry, 78, §116. Original italics. Baumgarten, 42, §14. The poem is probably one of Baumgarten’s own creations. Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing, 82. 11 21 alone has the power to represent the wealth of the sensible world, the very realm from which the philosopher, in his striving for more universal principles, abstracts.”12 Implicit in much of Baumgarten’s discussion is an acknowledgement of the capacities of the human imagination, or the call for heightened extensive clarity such as in his discussion of “heterocosmic” poetic description, something like today’s realistic fiction.13 From Baumgarten onward, art’s privilege would gradually come into focus as having the potential to bridge the divide between the inner workings of consciousness, the celebrated Cartesian cogito, and the world outside of it. While Baumgarten saw potential in poetry, Jean le Rond d’Alembert places music at the center of such a negotiation and establishes the art’s privilege by virtue of its semiotic capacities. A celebrated philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a scholar of many areas of knowledge, d’Alembert is perhaps best-known today for his 1751 Discours préliminaire des éditeurs. The text served as a prolegomenon to Diderot’s Encyclopédie, a massive encyclopedia project that so famously marked a comprehensive attempt to record knowledge across the disciplines as they existed in the middle of the eighteenth century.14 In the Discours préliminaire, d’Alembert lays out a taxonomy of the individual branches of knowledge to explain how the Encyclopédie was organized. As Brad Pasanek and Chad Wellmon argue, the project was not simply a neutral repository for data, but a purposefully organized index which presented information in a mediated way.15 As he lays out the organizational scheme 12 Beiser, Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing, 127–28. Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry, 55–56, §§52–54. 14 For more on the phenomenon of the encyclopedia in eighteenth-century European culture, see chapter 3 of Wellmon, Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University. 15 Pasanek and Wellmon, “The Enlightenment Index.” 13 22 branch by branch, d’Alembert explains to the reader: “These branches are subdivided into an infinite number of others.”16 After he discusses the physical sciences, d’Alembert attempts to classify the different artistic media. As with Baumgarten’s poetry, d’Alembert’s art serves to supplement the cogito, refining the subject’s cognitive understanding of the world: There is another kind of reflective knowledge, and we must turn to it now. It consists of the ideas which we create for ourselves by imagining and putting together beings similar to those which are the object of our direct ideas. This is what we call the imitation of Nature, so well known and so highly recommended by the ancients. Since the direct ideas that strike us most vividly are those which we remember most easily, these are also the ones which we try most to reawaken in ourselves by the imitation of their objects.17 Art provides opportunities to galvanize the subject’s memory. It imitates worldly objects in order to arouse the sentiments within us, yet the sentiments it prompts are both in the service of furthering science, rendering art purely instrumental for knowledge acquisition. According to d’Alembert, art can be divided into two categories roughly based on the semiotic distinction between natural and artificial signs, each in the service of mimesis. Painting, sculpture, and architecture directly imitate the world; they use natural signs, and so they speak most intimately to the senses. On the other hand, poetry speaks more to the imagination than to sensory organs because it uses words, artificial signs, and thereby creates objects rather than portrays them. Music occupies a unique space in this scheme because it speaks both to the senses and the imagination, which here roughly stands for that interface between the world and the cogito, or the outer and inner self. This leads d’Alembert to an aside about music, the 16 17 d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, 36. Ibid., 37. 23 only art that gets such a treatment in his initial summary of the branches of knowledge. First he observes that music’s contemporary practices serve as a threat to the art’s aesthetic force: recently music has become restricted to a small number of images for representation by imaginatively impoverished composers. It is now a discourse, language-like, through which sentiments of the soul, different passions, are expressed like the art of poetry. But this reduces music’s expression to passions of the inner subject, ignoring its ability to reach the senses, rendering music almost entirely cognitive and no longer as sensuous as it used to be—it has become more cogito than world. D’Alembert offers a corrective to bring outer and inner back together by charging music to present an object with a sound: “A frightening object, a terrible noise, each produces an emotion in us by which we can bring them somewhat together . . . Thus, I do not see why a musician who had to portray a frightening object could not succeed in doing so by seeking in nature the kind of sound that can produce in us the emotion most resembling the one excited by this object.”18 While music relies on its language-like properties to create objects that arouse emotions within us, it could also mimic a natural sound that would prompt the same emotion. It could reclaim its sensuous nature.19 D’Alembert’s discussion strikingly implies that music has the ability to bridge the gap between self and world, more so than any of the other artistic media relegated to either end of the natural–artificial sign division.20 In his eyes, while music had become 18 Ibid., 39. For a another period perspective on musical semiotics, see Dubos, Reflexions critiques sur la poesie et sur la peinture, 150. The passage is discussed in Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 148. 20 On this division in eighteenth-century musical discourse more broadly, see Riley, “Straying From Nature: The Labyrinthine Harmonic Theory of Diderot and Bemetzrieder’s Leçons de Clavecin (1771).” 19 24 impoverished over the years, it nevertheless had the potential to be the most aesthetic of the arts. Yet there was no clear path to such a goal to unite both self and world: “I confess that the kind of depiction of which we are speaking here demands a subtle and profound study of the shadings which differentiate our sensations; thus it is not to be hoped that these shadings will be distinguished by an ordinary talent.”21 It would take a gifted mind and considerable effort to remediate music. D’Alembert also avoids specifying examples of music’s mimetic capacity to express a natural sound or how it does this. This would be a discursive battleground for other aesthetic commentators around him. Where d’Alembert saw potential, others saw music’s troubled relationship with signification as a failure of the doctrine of mimesis altogether, threatening the medium’s ability to be aesthetic. Diderot remarked: “[Music’s] hieroglyph is so light and fleeting, it is so easy to lose or misinterpret it, that the most beautiful symphony will not have much effect if the inevitable pleasure that is subject to sensation pure and simply is not infinitely above that arising from [the music’s] often ambiguous expression.”22 Across the Channel, critics found music’s ability to represent real world phenomena as antagonistic to its capacity to mean anything all. In his famed Essay on Musical Expression of 1752, the Newcastle composer Charles Avison portrays the generation of affect as the ultimate goal of the art, one that supersedes any impulse for imitation of natural phenomena. According to Avison: “the aim of Music is to affect the passions in a pleasing manner,” a purpose for which “imitation is only so far of use.” He continues: 21 d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, 39. On the passage’s relationship to the tradition of the Affektenlehre, see Grant, “Music Lessons on Affect and Its Objects,” 41–42. 22 As quoted in Riley, “Straying from Nature: The Labyrinthine Harmonic Theory of Diderot and Bemetzrieder’s Leçons de Clavecin (1771),” 9. 25 What then is the Composer, who would aim at true musical Expression, to perform? I answer, he is to blend such an happy Mixture of Air and Harmony, as will affect us most strongly with the Passions or Affections which the Poet intends to raise: and that, on this Account, he is not principally to dwell on particular Words in the Way of Imitation, but to comprehend the Poet’s general Drift or Intention, and on this to form his Airs and Harmony, either by Imitation . . . or by any other Means.23 Avison’s saw a diremption between meaning and mimesis, as music’s materials—melody and harmony—were what supported the creation of the former. Any mobilization of the art’s materials for imitative purposes would lead to an unconvincing melodic or harmonic element that would impair music’s meaning-making abilities. Such perspectives led Herbert Schueller to remark: “For many 18th-century British writers, imitation in music was sheer trickery.”24 Things were even hazier for music without words. James Beattie, Avison’s contemporary and a professor of philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, claims in his An Essay on Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind of 1778 (originally written in 1762): “No imitation should ever be introduced into music purely instrumental. Of vocal melody the expression is, or ought to be, ascertained by the poetry; but the expression of the best instrumental music is ambiguous.”25 And while Beattie also harbors some 23 Dubois, Charles Avison’s Essay on Musical Expression with Related Writings by William Hayes and Charles Avison, 28. 24 Schueller, “‘Imitation’ and ‘Expression’ in British Music Criticism in the 18th Century,” 552. 25 Beattie, Essays on Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; on the Utility of Classical Learning, 135. A few pages earlier Beattie explains his skepticism with a vivid example of a recent piece of programmatic music: “I have heard, that the Pastorale in the eighth of Corelli’s Concertos (which appears by the inscription to have been composed for the night of the Nativity) was intended for an imitation of the song of angels hovering above the fields of Bethlehem, and gradually soaring up to heaven. The music, however, is not such as would of itself convey this idea: and, even with the help of a commentary, it requires a lively fancy to connect the various movements and melodies of the piece with the motions and evolutions of the heavenly host; as sometimes flying off, and sometimes returning; singing sometimes in one quarter of the sky, and sometimes in another; now in one or two parts, and now in full chorus. It is not clear, that the author intended any imitation; and whether he did or not, is a 26 misgivings about instrumental music within the hierarchy of the expressive arts, as Kiene Brillenburg Wurth observes, he finds that music’s seeming semiotic arbitrariness opens up a potential for the artistic medium to broach the sublime.26 The issues of expression and imitation—and particularly where the passions fit within the whole process of musical practice—captivated critics across England, France, and Germany, although there was little consensus how all these terms fit together. Characterizing the discourse, Marry Sue Morrow writes: “Equally entwined . . . were the strands of thought focusing on the imitation, the expression, and/or the arousal of the passions, with the distinction among them not always clearly maintained.”27 As instrumental music came to prominence, critics confronted music’s expressive capacities by establishing new theories about how it might convey meaning. And while recent musicological work has highlighted the mimetic qualities of instrumental music during this period, the period’s critics themselves found the genre’s avoidance of obvious signification—particularly due to its lack of words—as something requiring extensive explanation.28 If music had mimetic capabilities, they were, vestigial to many critics’ ears, and thus such capabilities could not (or, perhaps, no longer) supply music’s meaning. STYLES RUN AM OK Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century music critics and pedagogues spilled much ink over the cataloguing of musical style. It was a significant component of the collective matter of no consequence; for the music will continue to please, when the tradition is no more remembered.” Ibid., 130–31. 26 Brillenburg Wurth, Musically Sublime: Indeterminacy, Infinity, Irresolvability, 36–37. 27 Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century, 7. 28 See, for instance, Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia. 27 project to understand modern musical practice before the emergence of analysis and the concretization of the work-concept. A composition could be exemplary of a type of style or mixture of styles, not yet carrying the work-concept baggage which would endow it with the air of self-arranged systematicity and an invitation for the critic to elucidate its internal logic. Style recognition was a way to fill the gap between musical form and meaning, as it were. As the particularities of musical form were too vulgar to represent the infinite depth of human passions, classificatory schemes showing an array of acceptable styles allowed for critics and pedagogues to account for the structural features of a composition with the hope that the features themselves could coalesce into a semblance of meaning. In his first major treatise, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre of 1713, Johann Mattheson presents a style classification that he would carry with him and refine throughout the rest of his career as a critic. Within the text, according to Margaret Seares, “Mattheson shows clearly that he considers an analysis and understanding of the various national styles to be an essential part of the process of enlightenment of the modern German composer.”29 As has been noted elsewhere, the treatise’s title, “The Newly Founded Orchestra,” connects the work to the burgeoning Enlightenment discourse in the public sphere as exemplified in English moral weeklies pioneered by Addison and Richard Steele, particularly The Spectator and The Tatler.30 Based in Hamburg, a historic German bastion of British culture, Mattheson was quite familiar with the publications from across the North Sea and 29 Seares, Johann Mattheson’s Pièces de Clavecin and Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre: Mattheson’s Universal Style in Theory and Practice, p. x. 30 A classic account of the development is in Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 31–51. 28 attempted to emulate them in his own journal, Der Vernünfftler.31 The term from the treatise’s title, Orchestre, refers to the physical space of a concert hall, where members of the nascent bourgeois class of Hamburg might engage with musical performances and acquire a cultured education as was suited for society’s elite. It was also a gendered space, as Mattheson was particularly concerned with educating the man of leisure. According to Beate Kutsche: “Mattheson links skillfulness with moral concerns . . . a dexterous, adept, and brave fellow can only be considered as ‘galant’ if he manages to use these qualities for candid, i.e. honest, virtuous purposes.”32 Mattheson’s entire critical output, including his more overtly “theoretical” treatises from later on in his career which he is primarily known for, arises from these concerns. Mattheson begins Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre with a discussion on the decline of modern German music. In his eyes, German composers persistently relied on Lutheran cantorial practices that appeared outmoded in light of the recent influx of contemporary French and Italian musical influences in German cities. Beekman Cannon writes: “The traditional institution of musical training, the Kantorei, which was linked up with the older form of church music, and the worldly, modern style, for which no musical schools existed, became more and more alienated.”33 In the Orchestre, Mattheson raises several reasons for music’s decay, essentially providing the grounds for his critical project to assist 31 Evidently taken by Addison and Steele’s projects and unfettered by modern copyright law, Mattheson translated many issues of The Spectator and The Tatler into German in his Der Vernünfftler. See Pearson, “The Origin of Johann Mattheson’s Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre: Progressive Hearing Loss vs. English Empiricism.” 32 Kutsche, “Johann Mattheson’s Writings on Music and the Ethical Shift around 1700,” 30. While his privileging of the Galant Homme reinforced a gender divide, Mattheson, ever the promoter, pedaled his writings to the fair sex as well: “In his Vernünfftler, published in the same year, he recommended his Orchestre as a volume proper for the library of a lady of fashion.” Cannon, Johann Mattheson: Spectator in Music, 115. 33 Cannon, Johann Mattheson: Spectator in Music, 112. 29 the public—composers, performers, and listeners—in transcending the disastrous current state of affairs.34 Mattheson proceeds to give an account of the nuts and bolts of music. Along the way he outlines the three general styles of music (ecclesiastical, theatrical, and chamber), creating a categorization scheme that categorically undermined the stature of church music by equating it with the newer secular genres. He takes a particular interest in opera, a genre he sees as having the most potential for conveying meaning by virtue of is clearlyarticulated affects: “Through the skill of composer and singer, each and every affect can be expressed beautifully and naturally better than in an oratorio, better than in painting or sculpture, for not only are operas expressed in words, but they are also supported by suitable action and above all by means of music which moves the heart.”35 After going through the instrumental and vocal genres of secular music, Mattheson presents a chapter titled “Vom Unterschied der heutigen Italiänsichen, Französischen, Englischen und Teutschen Music” (On the Difference between Contemporary Italian, French, English, and German Music) which contains the core of his discussion of style. He claims: The Italians execute the best (generally speaking), the French entertain the best, but the Germans compose and work the best, and the English are the best judges . . . The first give music elevation, the second give it animation, the third have aspirations for it, and the fourth give it legitimacy . . . The first have a lot of inventiveness, but diligently apply little diligence, and the second do not apply theirs to the utmost, the third have a lot of inventiveness and extraordinary diligence, but the fourth have the best taste.36 34 For an account of Mattheson’s grievances, see ibid., 116–23. Adapted from ibid., 129. “Da durch des Componisten und der Sänger Geschicklichkeit alle und jede Affectus besser als in der Oratorio, besser als in der Mahlerey, besser als in der Sculpture, nicht allein vivâ voce schlecht weg, sondern mit Zuthun einer convenablen Action, und hauptsächlich vermittelst Hertz-bewengender Music, gar schön und natürlich mögen exprimiret warden.” Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 167–68. 36 Seares, Johann Mattheson’s Pièces de Clavecin and Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre: Mattheson’s Universal Style in Theory and Practice, 18–19. “Die Italiäner executiren am besten; (durchgehends davon zu reden) die Französen divertiren am besten; die Teutschen aber componiren und arbeiten 35 30 To Mattheson and many of his contemporaries, style was linked directly to national origin, although the period conception of nationality was quite different from what it would become in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century geopolitical spheres.37 By outlining these styles, Mattheson was calling on contemporary German composers to modernize their own style—to effect their own musical enlightenment. A significant precedent for Mattheson’s style classification was in Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis of 1650. In Book VII of his treatise, the famed Jesuit polymath outlined an account of musical style: Musical style can be considered two-fold in this place, either imprinted or expressed. The imprinted harmonic style is nothing other than the inclination of a particular mind, depending on the temperament of the natural man. By this a musician is inclined to this composition more than that one following reason, which indeed, by its variety, equalizes the diversity of temperaments manifested in mankind. There were eight types of “expressed” styles: church, canonic, motet, fantastic, madrigal, melismatic, choreographic, and symphonical.38 In his Clavis ad thesaurum magnae artis musicae of 1701, the Prague-based organist Tomàš Baltazar Janovka elaborated on Kircher’s notion of “imprinted” style, suggesting that a composer’s nation of origin has the am besten; und die Engelländer judiciren am besten. . . . Die Ersten erheben die Music; die andern beleben sie; die Dritten bestreben sich darnach und die Vierten geben was rechtes davor . . . Die Ersten haben viel Invention, wenden aber mit Fleiß wenig Fleiß und die andern den ihren nicht zum besten an; die Dritten haben viel Invention und ungemeinen Fleiß die Vierten aber den besten Gout.” Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 219–20. 37 On the concept of German identity in this period, particularly as it relates to Mattheson’s works, see Applegate, “The Musical Cultures of Eighteenth-Century Germany” and Applegate, “Editorial.” 38 Brewer, The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries, 23. “Stylus musicus dupliciter hoc loco considerari potest, vel impressus, vel expressus. Stylus harmonicus impressus nihil aliud est, quam habitudo quædam mentis ex naturali hominis temperamento dependens, qua musicus ad hanc potius quam illam melothesias rationem sectandam inclinatur. Quę quidem varietate sua temperamentorum in hominibus elucescentium diversitatem adæquat.” Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, 1:581. 31 biggest impact on his craft. The Germans and Bohemians are from colder climates, resulting in a lower vocal range, leading Janovka to assert: “By natural inclination they choose that in which they are best able to excel, namely the grave, languid, modest, and polyphonic style.” Due to a far less predictable climate, the French have a more capricious temperament: “They indulge primarily in the choreographic style, that is in ensemble dances, leaping dances, and similar festive dances (for example, flattering songs, and also galliards, currentes, [and] menuets).” Italy has the best weather and, naturally, the best compositional practices: “Just like those who find a most temperate climate, they therefore also find by their natures every suitable style most perfectly and most temperately, neither is there excessive lasciviousness in the choreographic festive dance, nor vileness in the modulation. Employing every style properly and with the best judgement, truly they are born to music.”39 Simply put, a composer’s native climate “impressed” particular constraints upon his craft. While Janovka’s theory is hardly compelling to a modern reader—relying on essentialist and readily falsifiable claims—it nonetheless marks an earnest attempt to grasp compositional particularity. Exemplifying the contemporary trend to provide climatological explanations for apparent sociocultural differences, the theory also demonstrates that such particularity was not necessarily directly connected to composers’ imaginative capacities but rather to issues beyond their control.40 39 Brewer, The Instrumental Music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and Their Contemporaries, 34. “Ita naturali inclinatione illud, quod optimè præstare possunt, eligunt, scilicet stylum gravem, remissum, modestum, & polyphonium “Unde potissimùm hyporchematico stylo, id est, choreis, saltibus, similibusque tripudijs aptissimo (uti cantiunculæ, item Galliardæ, currentes, menuetæ ostendunt) indulgent”; “Qui sicut clima temperatissimum sunt nacti, ita omnium quoque perfectissimum, temperatissimúmque naturæ eorum congruum stylum, nec Hyporchematicô tripudiô nimiùm lascivientem, nec Hypatodico vilescentem nacti sunt, omni stylo oportunè, & optimo cum judicio utentes, verè ad musicam nati.” Janovka, Clavis Ad Thesaurum Magnae Artis Musicae, 120–21. 40 See, for instance, Rousseau, “Essay on the Origin of Languages.” 32 Well into the eighteenth century, critics and pedagogues placed great currency on style. In fact, style taxonomies began to do the work of analysis before analysis, accounting for musical particularity before a composition’s particulars were to be conceptualized as a part of the self-organizing system unique to the work itself. As a quarrel between Mattheson and Scheibe demonstrates, critics required recourse to an ideal type to understand the unique organization of a given composition. According to Scheibe, “Musical style is a deft arrangement of notes expressing ideas and inventions accordingly. Thought and invention must come first, and style must coincide with them perfectly. The composer’s taste must be manifest in both, existing not only in style but in thought and writing as well.”41 “Style,” in effect, became an umbrella term to explain a work’s particularities before the “work” existed. In a 1737 issue of his own journal, Der critische Musicus, Scheibe came up with an influential style classification of high, middle, and low.42 His taxonomy also includes their problematic counterparts: the pompous style (“die schwülstige Schreibart”), the disorderly and irregular style (“die unordentliche und ungleiche Schreibart”), and the dull or wicked style (“die platte, oder niederträchtige Schreibart”). Each one refers to a particular compositional error. For instance, concerning the disorderly and irregular style, Scheibe writes: There is one line written in a high style, another in a middle, and finally a third in a low. Here there are French passages, but there we find Italian ones. First goes a theatrical phrase, then one suitable for the church. Everything is so chaotically 41 “Die musikalische Schreibart aber ist eine geschickte Zusammensetzung der Noten, die den Sachen gemäße Gedanken und Erfindungen auszudrücken. Das Denken und die Erfindung müssen also vorher gehen, und die Schreibart muß mit ihnen vollkommen übereinstimmen. In beyden zugleich äußert sich der Geschmack des Componisten. Dieser bestehet also nicht allein in der Schreibart, sondern im Denken und Schreiben zugleich.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 124–25. 42 Ibid., 126–29. For a translation and commentary of the Scheibe’s discussion of the three styles, see Willheim, “Johann Adolph Scheibe: German Musical Thought in Transition,” 130–35. 33 mixed together that a dominant style or a proper expression of things cannot be found.43 Even compositions that were improper or relatively unsuccessful instances of musical practice could be subsumed within a stylistic category. The exchange between Scheibe and Mattheson illustrates that as style taxonomies proliferated among critics and pedagogues, they were met with little consensus. Mattheson challenged Scheibe’s tripartite scheme, arguing in his Der vollkommene Capellmeister that the high–middle–low division is subservient to his own division of church, theatre, and chamber styles. He claims: “These are only secondary things and incidental terms which indicate high, middle, and low. They ought to be considered merely as subdivisions which in and of themselves cannot account for the religious, theatrical, or chamber style.”44 Each of the main styles—ecclesiastical, secular, or domestic—could support high, middle, and low subsidiary styles or, as Mattheson referred to them, “subdivisions” (Unterteile). Furthermore, a manifestation of any of the subsidiary styles was dependent on the given overarching principal style: for instance, the elevated style in the church was distinct from an elevated style in the home. While Scheibe relegates dances exclusively to the low style, Mattheson claims, “Dancing has the elevated and middle style as well as the low: all three 43 Adapted from Mirka, “Introduction,” 5. “Man hat in einer Zeile hoch, in der andern mittelmäßig, und in der dritten endlich gar niedrig geschrieben. Hier stehen französische, dort aber italienische Stellen. Bald zeiget sich ein theatralischer Satz, bald auch ein anderer, der sich in die Kirche schickte. Ja, alles ist so bunt und so kraus durch einander gemischet, daß man keinesweges eine herrschende Schreibart, oder einen gehörigen Ausdruck der Sachen finden wird.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 134. 44 Adapted from Harriss, Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, 190. “Es find nur Neben-Dinge und zufällige Ausdrücke, die das hohe, mittlere und niedrige anzeigen; man muß sie bloß als Unter-Theile ansehen, die für sich selbst keinen Kirchen- Theatral- noch Kammer-Styl ausmachen können.” Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 69. 34 are subject to, devoted to, and servants of the theater, the church, and the chamber.”45 Mattheson even takes issue with Scheibe’s attribution of passions to specific styles. He argues that it is instead how the music expresses the specific passion that ultimately determines whether the music falls into a high, middle, or low disposition.46 Scheibe’s response was swift. In a subsequent issue of Der critische Musicus, and without mentioning Mattheson’s name explicitly, he argues against conflating “genres” (Gattungen) with “styles” (Schreibarten). For instance, church music is a mere genre, and as such it is to be subsumed under the general style-types of high, middle, and low. The label “church music” constitutes an umbrella term of sorts for a set of pieces—cantatas, oratorios, motets, etc.—that were composed for the same use: worship. Scheibe seeks to deepen the idea of genre and explicate the reasons for a given genre’s varied manifestations, showing its contingency upon the idealized high, middle, and low styletypes that hover over it. He writes: “Each genre of a good style requires distinctive properties that arise from its inner nature, from the establishment of invention, from the truly genuine emphasis and expression of affects, of passions, and from other matters natural and incidental to performance.”47 Yet as spirited as Scheibe’s efforts were, as Imanuel Willheim notes, his account does not maintain an internal logic, making it hard to 45 Harriss, Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, 192. “Zum Tanzen gehöret die hohe, und mittlere Schreib-Art eben sowol, als die niedrige: dem Schau-Platze, der Kirche, der Kammer, in rechtem Verstande genommen, sind sie, wie wir betrachtet haben, alle drey unterworffen, gewidmet und bedienet.” Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 70. 46 Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 70–73. 47 “Dahingegen eine jede Gattung der guten Schreibarten weit andere Eigenschaften erfordert, die mehr auf das innere Wesen, auf die Einrichtung der Erfindung, und auf den wahren und wirklichen Nachdruck und Ausdruck der Gemüthsbewegungen, der Leidenschaften, und auf andere natürliche und zufällige Sachen, die zu dem Vortrage gehören, gehen.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 389–90. 35 follow.48 It is still instructive, however, for understanding the importance of the interrelationship among the stylistic domains of disposition (high, middle, and low), venue (church, theatre, and chamber), and nationality (German, French, Italian, and Polish), however contradictory his account seems in hindsight. Scheibe and Mattheson’s struggle was ultimately with the hierarchical structure of these domains, over the design of the taxonomic system of musical style and how the system’s branches were organized.49 As style classificatory schemes branched outward, so did the abstract number of acceptable compositions. Scheibe’s account is striking in part because he accounts for unsuccessful compositions in his stylistic taxonomy: for each compellingly composed manifestation of a style, there was also a slot for its perversion. While Mattheson challenges much of Scheibe’s thought, he reinforces the notion that such stylistic domains authorized musical practice. When Mattheson complicates Scheibe’s strict divisions—such as when he claims that church music could be performed in secular spaces—he in effect carves spaces for more categories: the ecclesiastic style presented in a chamber setting is intelligibly distinct from such a style within a religious one. Similar problems were happening across the North Sea. Avison himself highlights the proliferation of stylistic categories in his “Remarks on the Psalms of Marcello” which served as the preface to a 1757 edition of fifty psalm-settings of David by the Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello. In the essay Avison classifies the settings by sorting them into nine different “Stiles of Expression,” each of which is grouped with two others under 48 Willheim, “Johann Adolph Scheibe: German Musical Thought in Transition,” 138–42. Both Mattheson and Scheibe—seemingly at odds with the latter’s negative characterization of “the disorderly and irregular style”—would value a mixture of nationalist idioms in the period’s instrumental compositions, such as in the music of Telemann. See Zohn, Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann’s Instrumental Works, 4. 49 36 a broader principal style-type: the Sublime, Joyous, and Learned belong under the Grand; the Cheerful, Serene, and Pastoral under the Beautiful; and the Devout, Plaintive, and Sorrowful under the Pathetic. According to Roger Larsson, Avison’s stylistic taxonomy was differentiated primarily by affect, following his concerns laid out in his Essay on Musical Expression: “Avison’s aesthetic categories are distinguished chiefly by the emotions they comprise.”50 Yet his system did not lead to a perfect one-to-one correspondence between any given one of Marcello’s psalms and a “Stile.” Because Avison’s taxonomy could not readily subsume all fifty examples, he winds up leaving some of the pieces out of his discussion. After he successfully categorizes the unproblematic ones, he notes: “And also, that the Psalms, not specified, are too various in their Meanings to be classed under any one general Character; some of them containing, in themselves, almost all the various Stiles of Expression.”51 Even though Avison’s attempts were less formalized than Scheibe’s or Mattheson’s, he ends up in a similar bind when he confronts music that seemed too complicated to be exemplars of one particular style. Scheibe touches on a potential dead end of the discourse when he observes: “In general we have been given almost as many styles as there are pieces of music.” How could styles authorize compositional practice if their number was becoming unwieldy? Scheibe gets around this quandary with yet another splitting. He writes: “A distinct style is dedicated to each piece . . . without considering that this is not the style but rather the particular character of any piece, what distinguishes every piece from each other.”52 The 50 Larsson, “Charles Avison’s ‘Stiles in Musical Expression,’” 269. Dubois, Charles Avison’s Essay on Musical Expression with Related Writings by William Hayes and Charles Avison, 193–94. Original italics. 52 “Man hat uns insgemein fast eben so viel Schreibarten angegeben, als Musikstücke sind. Man hat also einem jeden Stücke, von den weitläufigsten an, bis auf die Tänze, eine eigene Schreibart 51 37 term “character” would become a loaded one for music criticism later on in the eighteenth century (see chapter 3), but here, as Scheibe conceptualizes it, it essentially operates as another stylistic subdivision. Much like d’Alembert, who argued for an infinite number of branches to map all of the world’s knowledge, critics collectively outlined a tree of musical styles which subdivided recursively until it could account for every piece of music written, moving from the most general marker of commonality to an individual musical composition. It would only take a few decades for Forkel and Vogler to cut away the swath of branches, tenuous as they were, to see a work as a uniquely arranged specimen which in effect was self-authorized, not an instantiation of an abstract style from on high. Until then, however, style was an important heuristic for critics to rationalize compositional practice. F I G U R E S , R H E T O R I C , A N D T H E M U S I C A L M E TA P H O R In the history of music theory, Mattheson is perhaps best known for his discussion of musical rhetoric in the fourteenth chapter of Part II of Der vollkommene Capellmeister, titled “Von der Melodien Einrichtung, Ausarbeitung und Zierde” (On the Establishment, Elaboration, and Ornamentation of Melody). His chapter is often recognized for offering one of the first discussions on the elaboration of melody, although scholars disagree on whether it amounts to a theory of musical form.53 For instance, Carl Dahlhaus claims that Mattheson’s chapter—and particularly his discussion of the so-named Klang-Rede— zugeeignet, ohne zu bedenken, daß dieses nicht die Schreibart, sondern vielmehr der besondere Charakter eines jeden Stückes ist, was alle Stücke von einander unterscheidet.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 393. 53 For a paradigmatic discussion of Mattheson’s contributions to the history of theory, see chapter 6 in Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century. 38 constitutes the oldest interpretive model of musical form and the first acknowledgement, albeit a reluctant one, of instrumental music as a viable genre in its own right.54 Yet as Markus Waldura notes, Mattheson’s discussion largely bears on the composition of an aria and his engagement with rhetorical terms is in the service of highlighting textual relations: “Like earlier theorists, he was primarily interested in teaching the art of composing a text properly—an aim that was not helpful in the investigation of the principles of musical form.”55 Though indebted to Burmeister, Mattheson invokes rhetoric at a moment beyond the twilight of scholasticism tradition to which the former was tenuously linked, instead appropriating the oratorical devices for his self-fashioned Enlightened critical project. He considers the whole of an aria, all the ritornellos, vocal sections, and accompanimental features throughout, leading Lester to claim: “Mattheson does not refer to text—in effect, he treats the aria as if it were an instrumental piece with a featured solo part.”56 But Mattheson nonetheless uses a rhetorical structure in ways that are reminiscent of Burmeister’s text-dependent structure from a century before. The introduction, Exordium, presents the melody of the first line of the text in the accompaniment before the singer comes in. The opening motive or first few measures becomes a referent for the first line of text of the aria. The rest of his rhetorical devices, such as Narratio, Propositio, Confutatio, Confirmatio, and Peroratio, rely on heightening the effects of the opening motive, and all again are implicitly tied to the lines of the text. Even the very word “melody” seems to 54 Dahlhaus, Die Musiktheorie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, 2:204. Waldura, “Musical Rhetoric and the Modern Concept of Musical Period—A New Perspective on 18th Century German Theories of Musical Periodicity,” 23. 56 Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century, 165. 55 39 hover between music and text, as an idea rooted in a line of text which the musical materials can utilize in various ways. Mattheson proceeds to examine the “melodic” components of an aria by Marcello (§§15–22) to illustrate the principles he outlines in the introductory paragraphs. In Mattheson’s chapter, the modern reader encounters telling ways of how music was conceptualized before the work-concept. What might be the most creative or imaginative part of the composition—embellishments and figures—Mattheson delays discussing until §40, notably after his dissection of the Marcello aria. On how such an aria might include embellishments, he writes: “Such depends on the skillfulness and sound judgment of a singer or player than on the actual prescription of the melodic composer.”57 A composition could not be abstracted from a given performance, and Mattheson hesitates to outline the ways in which a composer might incorporate elements beyond deploying the aria’s principal motives. German pedagogues and critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Mattheson among them, concentrated their efforts on theorizing a musical Figurenlehre, a doctrine of rhetorical figures which accounted for the particularities of musical material. Initiated by Burmeister, the tradition comprises at least seventeen different authors whose writings collectively straddled two major musical style periods. According to Dietrich Bartel: In the same way that an orator was to ornament and heighten his speech through rhetorical figures to lend it greater persuasive effect, so too could the composer 57 Harriss, Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister: A Revised Translation with Critical Commentary, 480. “Wenn wir endlich noch ein Wort von der Ausschmückung machen müssen, so wird hauptsächlich zu erinnern nöthig seyn, daß solche mehr auf die Geschicklichkeit und das gesunde Urtheil eines Sängers oder Spielers, als auf die eigentliche Vorschrifft des melodischen Setzers ankömmt.” Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 242. 40 portray and arouse the affections through comparable musical figures. . . . Music thereby adapted one of rhetoric’s most emphatic devices, beginning within a Renaissance aesthetic based on text expression and evolving throughout the Baroque era into a concept based on the expression and arousal of the affections in the listener.58 Figures eventually became the bearers of affect, marking a vital attempt to bridge the gap between musical form and meaning. At first, Bartel notes, “Figures were defined as aberrations from the simple or traditional compositional norms, primarily for the sake of variety, interest, and color.” Yet as pedagogues developed them in the eighteenth century, they became “the primary agents for presenting and arousing the affections.”59 Much like discourse taking up style classification, writings on the Figurenlehre did not constitute a critical project of consensus—no two typologies were identical. The figures themselves became an important tool for conceptualizing the composer’s imaginative capacities, and writers slowly approached figures as a compelling bearer of such capacities. Christoph Bernhard, who headed the electoral chapel of Dresden in the late seventeenth century, contributed an early example of the Figurenlehre in his Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (ca. 1657). According to Joel Lester, the treatise represents the first “comprehensive rationale for the new dissonance usages” constitutive of the seconda pratica, the shift in style in the wake of the Renaissance as musical practice steadily abandoned the traditional laws of strict counterpoint and embraced a more homophonic texture with a prominent bassline.60 As Michael Spitzer observes, the idea of the figure served a vital function for this transitional moment: “At a time when imitative counterpoint was breaking up into a panoply of new styles and genres, Figurenlehre 58 Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical–Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, 82. Ibid., 83. 60 Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century, 21. 59 41 increasingly assumed the status of a compositional control.”61 In the face of new styles, critics and pedagogues sought to delineate new ways to regulate musical structure. After he goes beyond the simplest of counterpoint procedures, Bernhard presents his taxonomy of figures. He prefaces his discussion by defining the “figure” as “a certain way of employing dissonances that renders them inoffensive, even quite pleasant, and highlights the skill of the composer.”62 Figures were the justification for when a composer could break the traditional laws of counterpoint in order to heighten a musical moment to complement the text. Since the old laws could not authorize such extravagant gestures, writers looked to rhetoric to fill the gap. Burmeister’s Lassus analysis that began the chapter exemplifies this connection. Spitzer observes: Burmeister’s extraordinary insight was that equipping music with a verbal metalanguage, compounded of rhetorical terminology, emancipates music’s materiality. A metalanguage breaks down the continuum of musical experience into discrete pertinent units. It creates typologies for emulation, repetition, and transformation. It identifies them with concrete and specific rhetorical procedures from the classical humanist tradition. And it provides well-defined and stable units of description.63 Writers after Burmeister, Bernhard included, were to embrace the domain of rhetoric for describing what they saw as imaginative moments that transcended older practices. The conceptualization of the Figurenlehre helped to individualize particular musical compositions, as well as the composer behind their creation, for there were many 61 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 171. Adapted from Hilse, “The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard,” 77. “Figuram nenne ich eine gewiße Art die Dissonantzen zu gebrauchen, daß dieselben nicht allein nicht wiederlich, sondern vielmehr annehmlich werden, und des Componisten Kunst an den Tag legen.” Bernhard, Tractatus Compositionis Augmentatus, 42. 63 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 171–72. 62 42 different ways to heighten a moment beyond the traditional laws of counterpoint. In the context of the Tractatus, according to Walter Hilse, Bernhard demonstrates how passages replete with ornamentation can be stripped of the latter, leaving skeletons fully in accord with the older practice. The adjective “natural” (natürlich) is consistently applied to this “unornamented versions,” as to stylus gravis in general, suggesting that is this style which Nature, with its immutable acoustical laws, has, so to speak, “given” to the composer (or performer), and that anything added thereto constitutes, almost by definition, an “artifice.”64 As Karl Braunschweig notes, eighteenth-century German music treatises would expound on a conceptual divide between nature and artifice that Bernhard describes here: “Those features that define norm and/or the essential also represent Nature, while their opposites mark artifice.”65 The use of rhetoric-based figures allowed a composition to move from the former pole of the spectrum to the latter. It was with Scheibe that the rhetorical metaphor and the Figurenlehre took a crucial turn. Scheibe is most concerned with adopting aesthetic concepts from oratory and poetry for understanding musical expression, and he takes Gottsched’s Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst (1730) as his model. As Bartel notes, the critic broke from the tradition by defining rhetorical procedures exclusively with musical structure in mind, with no text required: “Scheibe applies the figures to instrumental music more consistently and extensively than any author before him. While he emphasizes the figures’ role in expressing the affections, the traditional references to text expression are conspicuously absent in his definitions of the figures.”66 Scheibe’s reasoning involved that all figures found in 64 Hilse, “The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard,” 5. Braunschweig, “Enlightenment Aspirations of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Music Theory,” 290. 66 Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical–Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, 150. 65 43 instrumental music had their origins and affective content, or meaning, in music set to words: “One learns to differentiate between the figures’ form and content through vocal music. Only then can they be applied to instrumental music, which, concerning the expression of the affections, is nothing other than an imitation of vocal music.”67 This is a fraught position: Scheibe acknowledges the importance of words for providing affective meaning for musical structure, yet the structural figures themselves can be divorced from that original context and convincingly placed in instrumental music. Scheibe makes the logical conclusion that music without words can be filled with affect—and thus, meaningful—because the musical figures were themselves what carried affect. Some of Scheibe’s most interesting figures are ones that would be prescient for critical discourse onward, particularly when they explicitly address the sequencing of musical material. He labels one figure “dissection” (Zergliederung), which involves the breaking up of a “main theme” (Hauptsatz) of a work, such as in a fugue. Scheibe notes that the figure can be effective in instrumental and vocal genres outside of the fugue as well, such as in a concerto or an aria. Another figure, “contrast” (Gegensatz), involves presenting subsidiary themes in order to complement the main theme. In a concerto this might occur when the solo instrument presents a different idea from the introductory tutti ritornello, and in an aria this might be employed to present two different affects, such as in a duet.68 67 Ibid. “Und so lernet man folglich durch die Vocalmusik die Beschaffenheit der Figuren unterscheiden, und einsehen, und sie hernach auch in der Instrumentalmusik gebührend anwenden: weil diese in Ansehung der Affecten nichts anders, als eine Nachahmung der Vocalmusik ist.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 685. 68 Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 693–94. 44 Along with figures, Scheibe develops a conception of musical metaphor that engages directly with musical structure in another article from 1739: Sometimes the original notes of a composition are given a completely different form and sequence, and sometimes only individual notes are altered, given a different pitch or even a completely different value than what would have originally been assigned. In order to understand this better, we should take note that the basis of all these contrived musical settings, or paraphrased expression, is no different from the metaphors of the orators and poets. And so this musical metaphor is common to all musical compositions.69 Here Scheibe engages directly with terms from Gottsched’s Versuch, particularly when the philosopher evaluates the aesthetic merit of the concept of “metaphor” in the literary arts. To Gottsched, as Leland Phelps summarizes, “Metaphor was a form of decorative expression used by the poet or orator in place of an actual term. That is, it consisted in the changing of a label on a thing.” Though such a technique risked indulgence, its potential payoff was that it could provide the reader or listener “an opportunity to exercise his mental faculties in attempting to discover the true thing under the false name” which would result in “a degree of pleasure commensurate with his puzzle-solving ability.”70 Stefanie Buchenau notes that such poetic devices were also privileged by Gottsched’s Swiss sparring partners, Bodmer and Breitinger, precisely for unifying the manifold of sensory experience: “Sense perception differs from reason insofar as the mind’s forging of images, similes, or metaphors precedes and conditions the rational apprehension of the novel 69 “Man giebt bald den gewöhnlichen Noten eines Satzes eine ganz andere Gestalt und Folge; bald aber verändert man auch nur eine einzige Note, der man denn bald einen höheren oder tiefern Platz, bald auch eine ganz andere Größe, als ihr eigentlich zukömmt, ertheilet. Dieses besser zu verstehen, ist zu merken, daß der Grund aller dieser uneigentlichen Stellungen der Noten, oder des verblühmten Ausdruckes eigentlich nichts anders, als die Metaphora der Redner und der Dichter ist. Und diese muslkalische Metaphora ist also allen musikalischen Stücken gemein.” Ibid., 646. 70 Phelps, “Gottsched to Herder: The Changing Conception of Metaphor in Eighteenth Century Germany,” 130. 45 object.”71 Above all else, Gottsched claims, “As much as possible, metaphors must make everything more tangible [sinnlicher] than it would be in the original expression.”72 While Gottsched rules out metaphors for nonfiction writings as the devices tended to obscure truth, potentially subterfuge for the rational construction of a logical argument, he nonetheless acknowledges their aesthetic merit.73 Scheibe applies Gottsched’s metaphor model to his discussion of ornamentation of a given melody or phrase: The first type [of musical metaphor] concerns when an entire section of a piece acquires a form different from one based on its structural notes or the melodic sequence. It can happen in three ways. Either the section is tightened up, which is done with smaller note values or even with varied ones. Or, through another approach, the section can be amplified with its length left as is, though it is expressed in a completely different and livelier manner through a skillful alteration of note values. The section itself could even be made more expansive and grander by incorporating unexpected passages in sequence, becoming much more expansive than it originally ought to have been. And finally, instead of those notes which originally should have been used, foreign notes that are completely different are employed, thereby giving an entirely new force to the section. This happens mainly when the harmony is changed, either by changing pitches or altering the mode. And this is indisputably the most forceful and contrived type of the paraphrased expressions. Yet it still differs from figures as such since it always flows out of the original structural notes, even with all its alterations, while figures deviate from the structural notes completely.74 71 Buchenau, The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, 91. Original italics. “Endlich . . . müssen die Metaphoren so viel möglich alles sinnlicher machen, als es im eigentlichen Ausdrucke seyn würde.” Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen, 221. 73 For instance, of a certain Roman historian, Gottsched writes: “His accounts are not to be trusted because they sound too pretty.” (“Man traut seinen Nachrichten nicht; weil sie gar zu schön klingen.”) Ibid., 288. 74 “Was aber die erste Art derselben betrifft, wenn nämlich eine ganze Stelle in einem Stücke eine andere Gestalt gewinnt, als sie nach ihren Grundnoten, oder nach dem melodischen Zusammenhange haben sollte: so ist auch diese Art wieder dreyerley. Entweder man zieht sie enger zusammen, welches denn bald durch kleinere Noten, oder auch durch eine veränderte Größe derselben geschieht; oder man erweitert sie auch, welches auf verschiedene Art angeht, daß man nämlich bald dem Satze zwar seine Größe läßt, durch eine geschickte Veränderung der Größen der Noten aber denselben ganz anders und lebhafter vorträgt, bald auch diesen Satz an sich selbst weitläuftiger und größer machet, und ihn mit unerwarteten auf einander folgenden Sätzen verbindet, wodurch er denn viel weitläuftiger wird, als er eigentlich seyn sollte. Und endlich, so 72 46 Scheibe’s notion of a musically-specific paraphrased expression (“des verblühmten Ausdruckes”) relies on a gap between what today might be called the structural notes (“Grundnoten”) of a melody and the embellished final product.75 Scheibe’s discussion highlights Baumgarten’s point about poetry not needing to be rational to be poetic, or not needing to be true to be beautiful. The very idea of paraphrased expressions exemplifies this: for music to be musical, it cannot merely constitute the structural notes—the composer has to do something imaginative to the notes to make a product. In other words, the pure, virtual, gewöhnliche melody is an ideal which a musical composition cannot reproduce faithfully; it instead must be paraphrased. Scheibe writes, “It should be understood that no melody is beautiful that does not contain certain changes of structural notes, certain augmentations, diminutions, expansions, and other clever embellishments already adopted throughout.”76 For music to be beautiful, then, it must bear the stamp of a creative agent, or in Bernhard’s terms, must move from the realm of the “natural” to the “artificial.” gebrauchet man auch statt der Noten, die man gewöhnlicher maßen hätte nehmen sollen, ganz andere und fremde Noten, und giebt dadurch der ganzen Stelle eine ganz neue Kraft. Dieses geschieht nun vornehmlich, wenn man durch die veränderte Höhe, oder Tiefe, der Noten, oder auch durch die Veränderung der musikalischen Geschlechten zugleich die Harmonie verändert. Und dieses ist unstreitig die heftigste und künstlichste Art verblühmter Ausdrückungen. Dennoch aber geht sie von den Figuren im eigentlichen Verstande noch ab, weil sie bey aller ihrer Veränderung doch allezeit aus den gewöhnlichen Grundnoten fließen, und sich auf dieselben beziehen muß, da hingegen die Figuren insgemein von den Grundnoten ganz und gar abweichen.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 646–47. 75 A literal translation of the German adjective verblümt is “oblique,” but here I instead use “paraphrased” in order to convey Scheibe’s idea more clearly. He adopts the term from Gottsched’s Versuch. 76 “Man begreift, daß keine Melodie schön ist, die nicht gewisse Veränderungen der Hauptnoten, gewisse Zusätze, Verkleinerungen, Ausdehnungen, und andere scharfsinnige und bereits durchgehends angenommene Zierrathen enthält.” Scheibe, Critischer Musikus, 644. 47 As Scheibe notes at the end of his discussion of paraphrased expressions, the metaphor was always based on some original melody or structure beneath the surface while figures were something else. Elsewhere he clarifies: “Figures essentially do not correlate to specific, fixed structural notes. Quite often they alter musical passages. Thus they correlate to harmony and melody at once, and so they primarily concern the coherence [Zusammenhang] of a musical composition.”77 The distinction is tenuous at times though, considering Scheibe’s above description of musical metaphors included a type that alters the length of a passage by condensing material or adding “unexpected sequences,” so that what initially seems to be nothing but simple melodic embellishments leads to procedures that alter the interconnections of larger blocks of material.78 Scheibe’s discussions of figures and metaphors both seem to begin to codify musically-specific compositional processes that stretch well beyond the initial context of poetry or oratory, all the while linking them up with expression and creativity. L U L LY ’ S I M P L I E D T O N E S At the local level, the idealized versions of specific musical materials were not limited to Scheibe’s melody: Rameau’s writings consider the suggestive divide between such a version and actual composition from the domain of harmony, most perspicuously in his discussion 77 “Die Figuren im eigentlichen Verstande beziehen sich nicht auf gewisse und festgesetzte Grundnoten. Sie verändern sehr oft die musikalischen Perioden. Sie beziehen sich also zugleich auf die Harmonie und Melodie: und folglich betreffen sie vornehmlich den Zusammenhang eines musikalischen Stückes.” Ibid., 684. 78 Spitzer writes that Scheibe’s division is vital for his entire system: “Tropes ultimately engage reason, not emotion. With figures the priority is reversed. Whereas tropes widen the scope of language to express subtle distinctions of thought, figures enhance discourse’s ability to represent the passions.” Even so, Scheibe’s discussions of the two techniques do not seem to cleave such a clean divide between rationality and expression. Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 189. 48 of a famous French operatic monologue during one of the most chronicled events in all of eighteenth-century music history: the Querelle des Bouffons. The literary debate was precipitated by a visiting Italian troupe of comic actors who performed in Paris at the Académie royale des musique and fueled mostly by unauthorized pamphlets that had eluded the eyes of French government censors, all centering around the question of whether French or Italian opera was superior. But matters soon branched out to questions far more general about musical meaning in opera, even about music’s relation to language and its expressive potential in general. The debate was most incisive between Rousseau and Rameau, with a striking episode involving the former’s 1753 Lettre sur la musique français (Letter on French Music) and the latter’s response in his Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique, et sur son principe (Observations on Our Instinct for Music and on Its Principle) published the following year. Rameau’s agenda was to show that “Enfin il est en ma puissance” from Lully’s Armide was an effective example of words set to music, a passage he had first written about a few decades earlier in his 1726 Nouveau système de musique théorique. The monologue (Act II, Scene 5) occurs at a pivotal moment in the opera’s plot, when the titular character, an enchantress, has finally captured her enemy Renaud, a Christian knight, and prepares to kill him. As she raises her dagger, however, she suddenly realizes that she has fallen in love with him. The recitative presents her wrestling with her thoughts, encapsulating the dramatic arc of an extreme emotional shift from rage to admiration. In his Lettre Rousseau addressed the question of whether Lully’s music successfully captured the pivot as a litmus test for French music altogether, leading to his scandalous conclusion that the French language (thus the French operatic tradition) was 49 doomed to sabotage musical expression: “The French do not at all have a Music and cannot have any; or that if ever they have any, it will be so much the worse for them.”79 Many scholars have elucidated the arguments in Rameau’s Observations and their relation to the ones Rousseau had laid out in his Lettre, as well as each of the authors’ opposing world-views on musical expression that led to their widely divergent interpretations of a recitative well-known in the French critical circles of their time.80 What is worth highlighting here is Rameau’s curious critical maneuver in his discussion of the climax of the entire scene, when Armide’s monologue leads to a series of violently conflicting outbursts in mm. 18–22 (see EX. 1.1): “I shall finish this. . . . I tremble! I shall be avenged. . . . I swoon!”81 Throughout the Observations Rameau responds to Rousseau’s interpretation of the monologue, but this is the moment that leads to the latter’s most damning critique and the former’s significant rebuttal. Rousseau complains that the musical setting is altogether too simplistic for the heightened pathos of Armide’s disastrous wavering between thoughts of murder and adoration: “The Musician has left all this agitation in the same key, without the slightest intellectual transition, without the slightest harmonic distinction, in a manner so insipid, with the melody so little distinguished and so inconceivably clumsy.”82 After quoting Rousseau’s words explicitly, Rameau claims: “Not 79 Rousseau, “Letter on French Music,” 174. “Dʼou je-conclus que les François nʼont point de Musique & nʼen peuvent avoir; ou que si jamais ils en ont une, ce sera tant pis pour eux.” Rousseau, Lettre sur la musique français, 92. 80 See, for instance, chapter 1 of Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment and chapter 3 of Dill, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition. Earlier that year, a pamphlet believed to be penned by Diderot also discussed Lully’s “Enfin,” but in a positive light. Verba, “The Development of Rameau’s Thoughts on Modulation and Chromatics,” 70–71. 81 As quoted in Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment, 31. 82 Rousseau, “Letter on French Music,” 171–72. “Qui croirait que le musicien a laissé toute cette agitation dans le même ton, sans la moindre transition intellectuelle, sans le moindre écart harmonique, d'une manière si insipide, avec une mélodie si peu caractérisée et une si inconcevable mal-adresse.” Rousseau, Lettre sur la musique français, 86–87. 50 18 & #C ˙ ˙ Œ ‰ œR œR # ˙ & C ˙˙ ˙˙˙˙ ? #C w 7 { A- chev ons... Œ œ ™ œR ˙ J ˙˙ ˙˙ n˙˙˙ ˙ 6 ï w Œ œJ je fré-mis! ˙˙ ˙ ˙ œ ˙ J Œ œ™j œR 22 ˙ ven-geons-nous... #˙˙˙ ˙ 7 # ˙ je sou - pi ˙˙ ˙˙ n˙˙˙ ˙ 2w 2w w ˙ 7 2 2w ˙ œ Œ - re! Example 1.1: Lully, Armide, Act II, Scene 5, “Enfin il est en ma puissance,” mm. 18–22, with Rameau’s realization. Note: The figures in the Lully’s score solely specify diatonic triads. only is all this agitation not in the same Key, but it changes by the implied Chromatic every half-measure.”83 He disputes Rousseau’s very description of the musical structure, what today would be considered music-theoretical matters of fact. Amazingly, both are looking at the same passage. A major reason that the two writers could have such radically different descriptions of musical particulars is that Lully’s compositional practices are embedded in the performance tradition of thoroughbass, where composers do not specify all the notes in their score. Instead it was the performers’ job to realize the accompaniment above a given bassline in order to support the vocal part, a bassline that was sometimes labeled with figures to specify the harmonies and sometimes not.84 This was in the period prior to the rise of the work-concept, where “Enfin” operated as a fairly flexible entity that could be altered with any given performance. Even Rameau’s reading of the passage in question 83 Adapted from Rameau, “Observations on Our Instinct for Music and on Its Principle,” 191. “Non-seulement toute cette agitation n’est pas dans le même Ton, mais il y change par du Chromatique sous-entendu à chaque demi-hémistiche.” Rameau, Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique, et sur son principe, 96–97. 84 On the thoroughbass tradition, see chapter 3 of Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century. 51 is different from his earlier discussion of it decades before in the Nouveau système.85 The tones Rameau recognizes that are essential to his reprisal of Rousseau are not printed on the score, not even realizations of the supplied figured bass symbols—they are simply implied. He acknowledges this very fact toward the end of his Observations: There is an interplay of Chromatics here that which does not actually appear at all in Lully’s Figuration, but which appears to be the foundation of the different expressions, so very much so that it is enough to accompany them with a Harpsichord to be absolutely convinced of it. Whatever the Figuration may be, one should judge, by the different feelings which the Actor and the Listener experience here, that the Author could only have been guided by the Harmonic basis which we prescribe to it.86 As commentators have noted, Rameau’s invocation of implied tones was consistent with his own harmonic theories involving the corps sonore, a sonorous body whose principal resonance vibrated with its associated intervals of the dominant and subdominant, a conceptualization that allowed Rameau to develop his deeply influential theories of chord progressions and functional harmony. In contemporary terms, Rameau’s reading of implied tones in mm. 18–22 overlays a series of applied dominants, a virtual progression that eluded Rousseau’s grasp.87 85 In the Observations Rameau finds more “implied chromatics” than he does in the Nouveau système. Cynthia Verba argues that his changes are due to his own development in his conception of harmony throughout his life, as evident in his other writings and compositions. See Verba, “The Development of Rameau’s Thoughts on Modulation and Chromatics,” 81–91. 86 Rameau, “Observations on Our Instinct for Music and on Its Principle,” 192. “Il y a là un jeu de Chromatique qui ne paroît point effectivement dans le Chiffre de Lulli, mais qui paroît si bien être le fondement des différentes expressions, qu’il suffit de les accompagner avec un Clavecin, pour en être absolument convaincu. Quel que soit le Chiffre, on doit juger, par les différens sentimens qu’éprouvent ici l’Acteur & l’Auditeur, que l’Auteur n’a pû être guidé que par le fonds d’Harmonie que nous y prescrivons.” Rameau, Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique, et sur son principe, 104–5. 87 Rousseau had quite a different conception of harmony which would lead him to view the passage as bland. As Verba notes: “Rameau’s analysis is concerned with the overall harmonic context and the syntactic relationship among chords within a phrase or larger unit, while Rousseau essentially views chords or cadences as individual entities.” Verba, Music and the French Enlightenment, 32. 52 Rousseau likely saw the figurations of the original score without any of Rameau’s addition of seventh chords—the music simply consisted of diatonic triads which, to Rousseau’s ears, robbed it of any expressive potential. As with Scheibe’s abstracted originary melody in his discussion of the musical metaphor, Rameau’s harmony represents an idealized version of music that the composer must inevitably warp. Jairo Moreno observes such a separation in a discussion of Rameau’s concept of implied dissonances that his theoretical system embedded: “The [implied tones] belong to a phenomenological order distinct from the acoustical one given by the music; in this crucial sense the fundamental bass and the dissonant sevenths are implied.” He continues: “Neither of these analytical elements forms part of the music as it ‘exists in reality’ . . . they follow an order ‘that corresponds to our knowledge of them.’”88 Though Moreno’s agenda is to characterize Rameau as a modern Cartesian subject, whose implied tones become “cognitive interventions,” his observation of what he terms the “musical imaginary” applies to a broader phenomenon of conceptualizing musical particularity in the period. Rameau constructed an idealized harmony, a chain of dominants with a root movement by fifth leading to a conclusive tonic cadence.89 Any given musical composition could reflect this progression, albeit in an imperfect way, and usually sampled fragments of the lengthy progression. As Spitzer notes, Rameau’s circle-of-fifths progression adopts the “natural momentum of Newtonian 88 Moreno, Musical Representations, Subjects, and Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau, and Weber, 86–87. While Moreno’s larger argument is convincing, he relies on the anachronistic work-concept to portray Rameau as a subject fiddling with concretized musical structure, a distinction that was not necessarily meaningful for Rameau or his contemporaries. They instead seem to treat compositions and their arranged materials as far more plastic than critics would regard those in a “work” later on. Lully’s “Enfin,” for instance, consisted of harmonies and melodic embellishments that were assembled during a given performance, and harmonies that changed with Rameau’s changing conception of music theory. 89 Ibid., 92. 53 mechanics,” and any piece of music was required to deflect it with resting points and interruptions, among other things.90 To be a particular composition, then, the musical structure had to distort the idealized model. Rameau’s harmony and Scheibe’s melody both reveal the nature of composition prior to the rise of music analysis and the ascension of the musical work. Music critics and pedagogues faced unique challenges of the day in order to comprehend structure and its relation to expression. Their general approaches for approaching particularity involved constructing ideal types—melody, harmony, styles, genres. Since the status of the composer was far hazier than it would be once the work-concept enters the fray, writers often found deviations from these ideals as expressive—inventive, even—but the stars had yet to align in order to view the work as the product of one subject whose structural components were solidly bound to the work as an entity, and arranged in such a way that they seemed to belong without recourse to abstraction. In a few short decades, the work-concept would gradually crystallize, and critics would soon embrace compositions as self-contained entities authored by one creator—the composer: a singular agent, creative, and beholden to no idealized models. Aligning with the Kantian Copernican revolution, critics would approach a work as a totality whose parts supported it, as a meaningful interface between the exterior material world and the interior powers of the human creativity. In the writings of Forkel and Vogler in the following chapter, questions of ideality and distortion are pushed aside in order to elucidate how a given musical work achieved a quixotic balance between being both lawabiding and freely imaginative. 90 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 215–16. 2. FORKEL, VOGLER, AND THE TURN TO A N A LY S I S In 1778 two figures, alike in age, Bavarian heritage, and legal education, penned reviews of musical works that marked a watershed moment in the history of musical thought. The unprecedented reviews were extensive, offered particularly sensitive accounts of musical sound. The critics described moments they regarded as inventive, employed specialized terms to explain the musical structure, and elucidated how the parts of the work related to the whole. At the hands of J. N. Forkel and Abbé G. J. Vogler, and without much fanfare, music analysis had begun. Forkel, famed for his biography of J. S. Bach and for establishing the program of historical musicology in his 1788 Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, and Vogler, often sidelined as a minor, if eccentric pedagogue of his day, together lay claim to an accomplishment that transcends their reputations: both offered the first examples of modern music analysis in publications dating from, perhaps by coincidence more than design, the very same year.1 Their examples were contributions to periodicals, a burgeoning print venue of the eighteenth century that signaled an institutional split between compositional pedagogy and music criticism. The critic was now challenged to disseminate the specialized knowledge of music to a general readership, charged with educating a public unfamiliar with compositional and aesthetic treatises, offering reviews of concerts, recently published books, and accounts of musical goings-on in the different 1 Forkel’s foundational influence to the field has long been recognized, if not often discussed in recent scholarship. Joseph Kerman, for instance, refers to Forkel as “the first real German musicologist.” Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,” 315. See also Franck, “Musicology and Its Founder, Johann Nicolaus Forkel (1749–1818)” and Duckles, “Johann Nicolaus Forkel: The Beginning of Music Historiography.” 55 metropolitan areas across Europe.2 They also began reviewing musical works. As the work solidified into a distinct, autonomous entity in the latter half of the eighteenth century, journal contributors began to offer their judgment on whether a new publication was worth purchasing or whether a new performance had music worth listening to.3 Sometimes a work would occasion a protracted discussion of its content and organization—it was here that critics began to employ music analysis. The latter half of the eighteenth century also constituted a high moment for analysis, insomuch as Forkel and Vogler employed the practice in ways that evinced its robust efficacy. To them, analysis was a sound method of criticism, employed to show that a musical work was a compelling synthesis of music’s natural laws and the composer’s imaginative capacities. Their reviews, one of a symphony by Peter Winter and the other of a set of accompanied sonatas by C. P. E. Bach, demonstrate an thoroughly new conceptualization of musical structure, offering early accounts of sonata form and rondo form decades before such accounts were codified in compositional treatises. In other writings, Forkel and Vogler both laid out systematic arguments for how music was naturally construed. Influencing their analytical programs, these theories were indebted to the eighteenth-century aesthetic program that repudiated traditional conceptualizations of music and instead grounded it in natural, observable principles. Across their critical oeuvre, Forkel and Vogler also recognized the importance of imagination and creativity in the midst of the regulation, and their analytical texts 2 The knowledge music criticism sought to disseminate was not necessarily available to everyone, betraying the increasing division between, to use Forkel’s terms, Kenner and Liebhaber. See Riley, “Johann Nikolaus Forkel on the Listening Practices of ‘Kenner’ and ‘Liebhaber.’” 3 For an account of the rise of the musical work in this period, see chapter 8 of Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. 56 represented efforts to carve out a space for compositional freedom while still upholding the rational systematicity of music. Beyond musical discourse, the claim that material nature and human freedom were successfully fused was an idea that was central to the contemporaneous German aesthetic philosophical tradition. Forkel and Vogler were ultimately making claims at home in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical project, whose three Critiques serve as the principal formalization of the synthesis of freedom and nature. The writings of G. E. Lessing and Friedrich Schiller provide extensions of these concerns in different artistic media, and J. G. Sulzer’s writings on music offer a bridge between Kant’s abstract philosophical framework and Forkel’s and Vogler’s initial analytical forays. The beginnings of analysis established principles and models to be developed and challenged in the succeeding decades and, most significant of all, inaugurated our current understanding of the practice. GERMAN AESTHETICS Analysis developed as a practice in the wake of an immense philosophical debate, particularly in response to fundamental issues from the rationalist and empiricist traditions. As many have recognized, the philosophical endeavors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a turning point of modernity, grounding contemporary society in rational principles rather than ancient custom.4 The writings of Descartes and Bacon helped to establish a world separate from the human subject, and it was the subject who held the tools to make sense of the world by organizing sensory information in a rational manner. The newfound split was exemplified in the scientific work of Newton, 4 For instance, see Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. 57 with the universe becoming an enclosed system whose features all followed a set of selforganizing mathematical principles. Nature—that is, everything in the world was outside of the modern subject—was conceptualized as a complex mechanical system, and the subject held rational and moral capacities that transcended the world. Modern aesthetic discourse fashioned itself in response to a particular problem: if the material world could be reduced to a self-contained system through observation, where did that leave art? The experience of beauty seemed different from everyday sensory perception. Jane Kneller refers to this idea as “the emancipation of beauty from cognition” which, she argues, initially developed in the German literary criticism of J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger in response to J. C. Gottsched (see chapter 1).5 While artworks were made from natural materials, they arranged materials in creative ways that confounded the simple division between self and nature. According to J. M. Bernstein, certain philosophers found something significant about this unique quality: “In the course of the attempt to explicate the specificity of the aesthetic there arose a simultaneous attempt to secure for it a privilege.” Its privilege was that it held meaning, one that depended on, as Bernstein claims, “a conception of artworks as fusing the disparate and metaphysically incommensurable domains of autonomous subjectivity and material nature.”6 In other words, art stood at the interface of two divided spheres of modernity: selfhood, and the world outside of the self. Kant’s philosophy provides the most systematic account of the new paradigm. The first two Critiques, the 1781 Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason) and the 5 Kneller, “Imaginative Freedom and the German Enlightenment,” 219. Bernstein, “Introduction,” p. viii. My framing of Descartes and Newton, as well as my summary of Kant’s critical project, are also indebted to Bernstein’s trenchant account. 6 58 1788 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason), each constructed an autonomous subject fundamentally alienated from material nature. In his critical philosophy, reason became the primary locus of providing nature with meaning, meaning that sensory experience could no longer speak for itself. Bernstein writes: “The disenchantment of nature, which includes the human body, its pains and pleasures, leaves it dispossessed of voice or meaning, since all meaning is given to nature by (mathematical) reason.”7 In Kant’s first Critique, the subject emerges as a computational machine who relies on a set of internal directives to process the world around her, with the directives themselves the conditions for the possibility of a coherent experience of the world. Thus the subject stands separate from the world and must provide an account of the world based on their own rational capacities. In the second Critique, the subject’s moral capacities are subject to inner laws that provide directives for their actions in the world. Again, the free, abstract will of the subject guides the subject’s actions in the world, but nonetheless exists outside of the world through the infinite capacities of autonomous selflegislation. Philosophers soon construed the split as problem for which aesthetics provided a solution. In Bernstein’s words, “If art works are a response to this crisis, if they promise or exemplify a resolution, then they must suspend the dematerialization of nature and the delegitimation of its voice, on the one hand, and reveal the possibility of human meaningfulness as materially saturated and so embodied on the other.”8 A reconciliation of sorts occurs in the 1790 Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment), where Kant 7 8 Ibid., p. ix. Ibid., p. x. 59 theorizes the powers of the aesthetic domain, contending that the subject experiences beauty with reflective judgment, a mental power which mediates between the self’s systematizing processes of the natural world and its abstract willings. Robert Pippin describes the move as a bold one: “There is, as it were, some distinct way to render intelligible what the official doctrine of the first Critique seemed to rule out: a way of understanding . . . that we were both naturally embodied objects in the world and, without inconsistency, practically free, responsible agents.”9 The argument, however convincing or preposterous it seemed to Kant’s readers, fueled German idealist philosophy and early German romantic intellectual traditions.10 Schiller’s 1794 “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen” (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man) provides a clear summary of the paradigm of Kant’s conception of reflective judgment. Schiller theorizes a sensuous drive and a formal drive, the former corresponding to our natural, physical existence in time and space, and the latter corresponding to our absolute, rational being concerned with freedom and affirmation of personhood. He also posits a play drive, which is responsible for connecting the two other drives: “The play drive, therefore, would be directed toward annulling time within time, reconciling becoming with absolute being and changed with 9 Pippin, After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism, 13. Pippin’s introduction sets up the Kantian project in a manner very similar to Bernstein’s, both framing their discussions in light of Hegel’s aesthetic theory. 10 How successful Kant’s third Critique was in convincing the reader of the reconciliation is an intriguing question. As Bernstein points out elsewhere, the two modern traditions of continental and analytical philosophy can both be traced back to radically different readings of the final Critique. He poses the following question to capture the point of divergence: “Are the goals of the Enlightenment truly fulfilled through the categorial separation and division of spheres; or do those divisions prohibit the fulfilment of the goals and intentions which their emergence promise?” Bernstein, The Fate of Art, 7. 60 identity.”11 The play drive responds to beauty, roughly corresponding to the role of the aesthetic domain in Kant’s philosophical system. In the aesthetic philosophy of the mid- to late-eighteenth century, Kant, Schiller, and others relied on the claim that an aesthetic object bridged the gap between self and nature. According to Bernstein: In modern works of art freedom, the human capacity for autonomous sensemaking, appears, that is, art works are unique objects, and as unique sources of normatively compelling claims, they are experienced as products of freedom, as creations; their uniqueness and irreducibility are understood as the material expression of an autonomous subjectivity.12 An artwork held the potential to demonstrate two claims: that material nature could have meaning, and that autonomous subjectivity could appear sensible in form. While different figures of the German neoclassical aesthetic tradition held a variety of opinions about, for instance, how much freedom was to be constrained by laws or how the synthesis related to the domain of ethics, they built their systems on this operative thought. Thomas Christensen goes as far as to frame the entire period with this dualism: “It was in the eighteenth century that the dialectic of reason and imagination was pursued most tendentiously.”13 According to Bernstein, the synthesis emerges in Lessing’s well-known essay on Laocoön and Schiller’s Kallias-briefe, and it underwent many reformulations 11 Schiller, “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” 126. Bernstein, “Introduction,” p. xi. While Kant’s account privileges natural beauty along with fine art (if not more so), philosophers after him would increasingly privilege art works in their aesthetic writings, culminating with Hegel, who repudiated nature entirely in his aesthetic theory. Following Bernstein and Pippin, I focus on art works as the suggestive intersection between freedom and nature. 13 Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment, 3. 12 61 across the late-eighteenth century, such as in the writings of J. G. Hamann and K. P. Moritz. The claim that human subjectivity and material nature could mix harmoniously was a fragile one. It would be contested in the writings of the early German romantics, who challenged its very possibility. For instance, Friedrich Schlegel and his Jena circle construed nature at an irretrievable distance from the subject. They mourned nature’s loss, and ultimately doubted that the infinitude of the human subject could ever be at home in the cold, mechanical, Enlightened world. Nonetheless, for a fleeting time in the second half of the eighteenth century, the idea that nature and subject could be successfully combined in an artwork fueled aesthetic discourse and art criticism. It was also a central principle for the beginnings of music analysis in the writings of Forkel and Vogler, both of whom provided accounts of their conceptualizations of musical nature and freedom alongside their analytical writings. DA M M I N G T H E M U S I C A L TO R R E N T S In the eighteenth century, theorists and critics continued the program of Descartes and Bacon by interpreting music as nature, conceptualizing its properties as observable and repeatable phenomena—they firmly believed that music followed natural laws. Music’s materials existed outside of the self; they were audible sensory matter of a mathematical universe. Even decades before Forkel and Vogler, Rameau had claimed: “Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.”14 Even 14 Rameau, Treatise on Harmony, p. xxxv. 62 the most intricate of musical materials, such as chord progressions, with their various inversions and suspensions, maintained a mathematical order following music’s own principles. Historians Jonathan Sheehan and Dror Wahrman could very well be talking about musical discourse when they refer to a characteristic eighteenth-century discourse that stressed the self-organization of a given system. The interpretative trope was a widespread cultural phenomenon that took off in the 1720s, surfacing in a variety of disciplines and maintaining the grounding thought that “even if God was no longer the active hands-on guarantor of order, complex systems, left to their own devices, still generated order immanently, without external direction, through self-organization.”15 A foundation of Rameau’s system is his conception of the circle-of-fifths progression, the foundation of modern functional harmony. In Michael Spitzer’s words, Rameau saw the progression as a “closed universe” that embodied “the natural momentum of Newtonian mechanics,” and it was up to the composer to artfully interrupt this natural motion for constructing musical phrases (see chapter 1).16 Music, shorn of the metaphysics and the traditional strictures of the pre-modern period, became a complex, autonomous system—it was rationalized. Scholars construed the rationality of music’s materials in two domains: meaning and form. Meaning refers to what was ascribed to music from outside of it, such as passions, sentiments, affect in general, and various analogues with human language. Form refers to the components of inner musical structure as we understand them in the contemporary discipline of music theory, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, or more 15 16 Sheehan and Wahrman, Invisible Hands: Self-Organization and the Eighteenth Century, 9. Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 215. 63 advanced notions like motivic structure and tonality. Each domain was based on a set of rational principles that regulated the musical material, principles construed as natural rather than traditional, constitutive of a coherent scientific system rather than an assemblage of age-old customs. Figures saw music’s meaning through a series of metaphorical relations, most popularly as affect, passions, sentiments, or emotions. These relations were what music expressed; they were whatever capacity music had beside its organized configuration of sounds. With the emergent genres of instrumental music, critics were quite invested in providing accounts of the regulative capacity of sentiments. As Lessing memorably claims in his 1767 Hamburgische Dramaturgie: A symphony that expresses opposed passions in its different movements is a musical monster; in one symphony only one passion must reign, and each particular movement must sound and seek to awaken us precisely with that passion, merely with various modifications corresponding to the degrees of its strength or its liveliness, or the various blendings with other related passions.17 Lessing’s ideas are indebted to a short-lived mid-century conception of the symphony, when the genre served to punctuate plays as an overture or interlude, often running through memorable tunes from the show, and hardly the weighty genre associated with the century’s end.18 Lessing’s theory might also seem staunchly conservative, constraining the 17 “Eine Symphonie, die in ihren verschiednen Sätzen verschiedne, sich widersprechende Leidenschaften ausdrückt, ist ein musikalisches Ungeheuer; in Einer Symphonie muß nur Eine Leidenschaft herrschen, und jeder besondere Satz muß eben dieselbe Leidenschaft, bloß mit verschiednen Abänderungen, es sey nun nach den Graden ihrer Stärke und Lebhaftigkeit, oder nach den mancherley Vermischungen mit andern verwandten Leidenschaften, ertönen lassen, und in uns zu erwecken suchen.” Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 1:214. 18 Lessing’s discussion is centered on a theater work of Johann Friedrich Agricola, the composer’s incidental music for Sémiramis which itself was written at the suggestion of Lessing. Flaherty, Opera in the Development of German Critical Thought, 227. For an overview of the early history of the symphony, see Will, “Eighteenth-Century Symphonies: An Unfinished Dialogue” and the introduction to Morrow and Churgin, The Eighteenth-Century Symphony. 64 symphony to one passion, serving a subordinate function to the dramatic work it precedes. Nonetheless, his impulse to regulate the symphony’s content through its passions is part of a larger phenomenon of theorizing how musical material was organized. It is also characteristic that a violation of the principle led to a “monstrous” product, or nothing less than a perversion of nature. Yet the Lessing quotation also reveals a countervailing force, a slackening of the strict regulatory capacity of the singular passion. In addition to varying intensities of a passion, the work can present “blendings with other related passions.” For every law there was a space carved out for variety, for creativity, for freedom. Forkel explores this dualism in a lengthy review of C. P. E. Bach’s 1783 Keyboard Sonata in F Minor, W. 57/6, H. 173, wherein he presents a “Sonata Theory” (“Theorie der Sonate”) as a framework for evaluating the composer’s recent efforts at hand. Forkel’s principal claim is that a legitimate sonata must contain two elements: “First: inspiration, or a very lively expression of certain emotions. Second: order, or a purposeful and natural progression of these emotions into some that are similar and related, or even more remote.”19 Connecting this theory to German aesthetics, the two terms, Begeisterung and Anordnung, stand for the two poles of freedom and nature. Forkel continues: The first of these characteristics is a product of creative nature. Wherever nature creates inspiration, we must accept it with gratitude and try to utilize it to our benefit and delight; but art has nothing to do with its creation. Art occupies itself only with the second characteristic and is, therefore, basically nothing but a means to guide that fire along certain ways, through certain channels, and to lead it towards specific aims and targets at times through smooth, straight beds, at times 19 Adapted from Beghin, “Forkel and Haydn: A Rhetorical Framework for the Analysis of Sonata Hob. XVI:42,” 34. “Erstlich: Begeisterung, oder höchstlebhaften Ausdruck gewisser Gefühle; zweytens: Anordnung, oder zweckmäßige und natürliche Forschreitung dieser Gefühle, in ähnliche und verwandte, oder auch in entferntere.” Forkel, “Ueber eine Sonate aus Carl Phil. Emanuel Bachs dritter Sonatensammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber, in F moll,” 29. 65 through all kinds of curves and even, depending on the occasion, over hill and dale. Art is like a dam to rushing torrents, keeping them from breaking out and devastating surrounding regions; or a beneficial safeguard against fire in order not to let it blaze up into a wild, all-consuming flame, but rather to restrict its forces merely to the dissemination of a benevolent, entirely invigorating warmth.20 To Forkel, art constitutes the constraining of the imagination—the ordering of the infinite forces of creativity. In the context of his Sonata Theory, Forkel claims that art synthesizes the powers of the human imagination and the natural laws of emotional behavior. As laid out in the extensive “Einleitung” to his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, Forkel regards music as the expressive medium for human emotion, analogous to what speech is for human understanding, and it is only in our modern age that music has perfected the capacity to express a precise and rational language of emotion.21 Oratorical figures are to be used for expressing this emotive language and, Forkel claims, are grounded in human nature. Forkel develops his Sonata Theory further by laying out a typology. To him there are only three types of sonatas, each following a characteristic emotive trajectory. In the first: “A pleasant principal sentiment dominates and is maintained during a whole piece 20 Adapted from Beghin, “Forkel and Haydn: A Rhetorical Framework for the Analysis of Sonata Hob. XVI:42,” 34–35. “Die erste der erwähnten bey den Eigenschaften ist ein Werk der schöpferischen Natur. Wo diese sie schafft, müssen wir sie mit Dank annehmen, und zu unserm Nutzen und Vergnügen zu verwenden suchen; aber die Kunst hat bey ihrer Erschaffung nichts zu thun. Diese beschäftigt sich bloß mit der zwoten Eigenschaft, und ist daher im Grunde nichts anders als ein Mittel, jenes Feuer auf gewisse Wege, in gewisse Canäle zu leiten, und es zu besondern Absichten und Entzwecken bald auf sanften, graden Betten, bald durch allerhand Krümmungen, auch wohl sogar bisweilen, nach Maasgabe der Veranlassungen, über Stock und Steine fortzuführen. Sie ist wie reissenden Strömen ein Damm, damit sie nicht ausbrechen, und umliegenden Gegenden verheeren können; oder ein heilsames Verwahrungsmittel vor dem Feuer, um es nicht zu einer wilden, alles verzehrenden Flamme empor lodern zu lassen, sondern dessen Kräfte blos auf Verbreitung einer wohlthätigen alles belebenden Wärme einzuschränken.” Forkel, “Ueber eine Sonate aus Carl Phil. Emanuel Bachs dritter Sonatensammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber, in F moll,” 29–30. 21 For more on this theory, see §19 onward in the “Einleitung” to Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik. 66 through all possible appropriate and hence related, pleasant subsidiary sentiment.” In the second: “An unpleasant principal sentiment is suppressed, soothed, and little by little turned into a pleasant one.” Finally, in the third: “A pleasant principal sentiment is not sustained and pursued but is, by the introduction of unpleasant sentiments that are faint at first and subsequently become stronger, eradicated, and finally turned into an unpleasant sentiment entirely.”22 The sonata in question epitomizes the second type, with the first movement expressing “irritation,” the second “meditation and reflection,” and the third a “melancholic composure” that serves to soothe the affective shifts preceding it. Forkel claims that Bach’s sonata follows a path akin to an enraged person calming down and realizing, with certain tranquility and regret, the impetuousness of their initial episode— thus the sonata in question is regulated by an authentically natural affective progression. The regulatory conceptions of meaning arose alongside those of form, particularly as theorists and critics came to regard music’s technical structure as something organized by means of its own self-standing principles. Earlier in the century the most famous attempt was Rameau’s, whose theorizations construed all of modern music’s complexities arising from an ordered system of chord progressions. Vogler maintained this conception some decades later with music’s basic harmonic structure, extending Rameau’s theory using his multi-stringed Tonmaass in place of the monochord to provide the proportions 22 Adapted from Beghin, “Forkel and Haydn: A Rhetorical Framework for the Analysis of Sonata Hob. XVI:42,” 39. “Die erste Ordnung ist die, wo eine angenehme Hauptempfindung herrscht, und durch alle mögliche passende und damit verwandte angenehme Nebenempfindungen durch ein ganzes Stück hindurch unterhalten wird. Die zwote, wo eine unangenehme Hauptempfindung unterdrückt, besänftigt, und nach und nach in eine angenehme verwandelt wird. Die dritte, wenn eine angenehme Hauptempfindung nicht unterhalten und fortgeführt, sondern durch die Interposition erst schwache, sodann stärkerer unangenehmer Gefühle vertilgt, und dadurch endlich ganz in eine unangenehme Empfindung verwandelt wird.” Forkel, “Ueber eine Sonate aus Carl Phil. Emanuel Bachs dritter Sonatensammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber, in F moll,” 34. 67 and intervals for the foundation of, to use Vogler’s word, Tonwissenschaft.23 Yet Vogler also saw a divide between fundamental musical principles, such as the construction of a scale, and the vastly more complex musical structures of compositions, or what he terms Tonsetzkunst. The two elements of Tonsetzkunst Vogler typically focuses on, as will become apparent in his analysis of the Winter symphony, are motivic development and key relations. Vogler elucidates the rational structure of musical form by focusing on motivic development, a concept which surfaces repeatedly in his serialized journal, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule. As Floyd and Margaret Grave observe, Vogler takes care to differentiate between Fortführung and Ausführung. The former, “continuation,” corresponds to material that appears to originate from what came before it, that is, material seemingly in the spirit of prior ideas yet different in content. The latter, “development,” alters prior material. According to Vogler: “The same set in different forms is development. Difference brought under the same form is continuation.” He provides a model phrase to show the difference between Fortführung and Ausführung, with mm. 2–4 employing the former and mm. 5–8 the latter (see EX. 2.1).24 For more literal utilizations of prior material, Vogler uses Wiederholung for basic repetition and Versetzung for transposed material. Wiederholung, according to Vogler, can be useful at times but in the hands of an unimaginative composer can lead to vapidity. Versetzung requires a bit more effort, particularly if the material is presented in a different mode.25 The composer utilizes 23 Grave and Grave, In Praise of Harmony: The Teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, 18–20. “Dasselbige in verschiedenen Gestalten sezen, heist Ausführen. Verschiedenes unter dieselbige Gestalt bringen, heist Fortführen.” Ibid., 95. 25 Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1779, 2:365. 24 68 4 &4 œ œ œ Œ { ? 44 œ œ œ Œ œ#œ œ œ œnœ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ Œœ œ œœ œŒ œ œœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœ œ w w œ Œ Ó w œ œ œ œ ˙ œ̇ œ œ œ̇ œ & œœœ œ ˙ œ œ # œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ ˙œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙œ#œ œ œ œ œ ? Ó œ 6 { œ œ Œ Ó œ Œ Ó œ œ Example 2.1: Vogler, Example of Fortführung (mm. 2–4) and Ausführung (mm. 5–8) from Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule the different types of thematic processes in order to relate the parts to the whole of a given work. Vogler also developed a conception of key relations. On a general level, according to Vogler, the composer destroys the unity of a work when he modulates to distant keys, and so the Betrachtungen only condones the diatonic keys of a given tonic whose dominant lies a perfect fifth above the given local tonic.26 Yet as Vogler theorizes more about key, he tellingly betrays almost no qualitative distinction between form and meaning. In an article titled “Thätige Geschmaks-Bildung für die Beurtheiler der Tonstücken” (Active Formation of Taste for the Evaluation of Musical Works), Vogler presents the idea of shifting key centers as fundamental for the success of a composition: Unity and variety must always be intertwined, and this principle refers to precisely both notes and key. If a movement remains in one key, incorporating no modulation whatsoever, the tonal unity lapses into a revolting monotony or dullness which offends the ear. If it always keeps to the same notes without any other alternating motion; if the phrases always group together measures into two by two or four by four, as pure nonsense, without indicating a particular 26 Grave and Grave, In Praise of Harmony: The Teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, 63. 69 expression, like the trifling words of a soubrette or a comical caricature of the droll pair of Harlequin and Columbina—then what results is dryness, intolerable dryness.27 Vogler employs Commedia dell’Arte tropes to describe key relations: a work which remains in one key is akin to a play with only the minor servants, who are unable to establish a core plot by themselves. Vogler also connects unvarying key relations directly to monotonous phrase lengths and, significantly, to the work’s impoverished expressive capacities. Dull formal components mean boring meaningful ones. Vogler continues by considering the consequences of too many key areas: But if the piece sustains no key; if it modulates continuously not only from one key to another but also into keys that are no longer related to each other; if the phrases are distorted by setting different voices against each other, whether it be three notes against two or four against three, fast or slow; if any begins halfway through or even on the third beat of the measure, and without specifying a particular expression that is almost not possible, a fluctuating rage, a chimerical dream—then this variety degenerates into disarray.28 Vogler bases his conception of a work’s key relations on a negotiation between monotony and disarray, a negotiation he sees in common with the “first principles” (“ersten Grundsäze”) of other arts as well, such as oratory, poetry, and painting. Again, Vogler 27 “Einheit und Mannigfaltigkeit müssen immer miteinander verbunden werden, und dieser Grundsaz bezieht sich eben sowohl auf die Noten als Töne. Wenn ein Stück in einem Tone bleibt, gar keine Ausweichung einmischt: so verfällt diese Tonseinheit in eine ekelhafte Monotonie oder Eintönigkeit, die das Gehör beleidiget; harret es stets bei denselben Noten ohne aller anderen abwechselnden Bewegung; sind die Perioden stäts dieselbige von 2 zu 2, von 4 zu 4 Schläge, lauter abgestuzte Sinne, und dies ohne Angabe noch eines besondern Ausdruckes, vielleicht den tändelnden Worten einer Soubrette, oder den komischen Caricaturen des drolligten Paars Arlequin und Columbina zu gefallen—dann wird es Trokenheit—unerträgliche Trokenheit.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:285. 28 “Hält aber das Stück in keinem Tone stand; weichet es nicht nur ohne Unterlas von einem Ton zum anderen sondern auch in Töne aus, die nicht mehr im Bezuge stehen; und bald 3 Noten zu 2, bald vier zu 3 in verschiedenen Stimmen gegeneinander gesezt—bald geschwind, bald langsam— liegen die Perioden unrecht; fängt einer im halben oder gar dritten Viertel des Schlages an, und dies ohne Angabe eines besondern fast nicht möglichen Ausdruckes, eines veränderlichen Wahnsinns, eines chimärischen Traumes—dann artet diese Mannigfaltigkeit in Verwirrung aus.” Ibid., 1:286. 70 refuses to disentangle key from local phrase structure or from affective content. A kaleidoscopic succession of keys and an unstable phrase structure leads to a perplexingly mercurial sequence of affects, an expression that is unnatural and thus practically incoherent. Vogler’s intermixing of structure and expression reveals a defining feature of contemporary criticism and analysis. For both Forkel and Vogler, meaning and form were homologous—they stood in a unified, harmonious relation to one another. The period’s paradigmatic model of rationalizing musical structure exemplified the connection, the Hauptsatz model. This conception of form, named for the German word roughly meaning “main clause,” designated that the introductory passage of a work exhibit structural and expressive content in order to regulate the content of the remainder of work.29 In other words, the beginning was to contain the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms from which the rest of the work generated its formal content, while also introducing affective content that the rest of the work had the burden to sustain and develop. With the help of Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Johann Georg Sulzer provides a summation of the regulative capacity of the Hauptsatz in his Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste of 1774: [Today’s compositional forms] are all related in that in any one of their main sections there is only a single, short main theme established that expresses the respective sentiment of the period. Such a main theme should be supported or even interrupted by smaller subsidiary ideas that are appropriate to it. This main theme should be repeated along with those subsidiary ideas using various harmonies and keys, as well as with slight melodic variations (providing they are all appropriate to the main sentiment expressed) to the point where the listener himself has been 29 “Satz” is a notoriously vague word in period music writings because, like most other technical music terms of the eighteenth century, its use was not standardized. Its meaning ranged from a musical passage of a few measures to a few pages, to a movement in its entirety, or even something a bit more abstract. I retain it in the original German in my translations of Vogler and Forkel, as well as in following chapters. Critics, including Forkel and Vogler, would also rely on other terms to convey a similar concept, such as Hauptidee or Hauptgedanke. 71 completely overtaken by the sentiment of the music, and he has experienced it from all sides.30 Sulzer initially outlines form, locating in the music main themes and subsidiary ideas that develop a range of alterations, harmonies, and keys. Then he connects form to meaning by claiming that the Hauptsatz contains a certain sentiment which the remainder of the work is bound to express.31 Perhaps the vagueness of the word “Satz” in period musical writings captures the conflation of the two, as it could refer to a certain group of measures or a certain group of sentiments. Forkel’s Sonata Theory resonates with this connection when he states that every sonata must contain “a main sentiment,” “similar supporting sentiments,” “disintegrated sentiments, that is, ones dissected into distinct parts,” and “contradictory and opposed sentiments.”32 Forkel conceptualizes sentiment here the way Vogler conceptualizes motivic structure. At this critical moment in the latter half of the eighteenth century, musical structure held a direct correspondence with affect, with the establishment, variations, and development of one directly lining up with the other. 30 Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment, 101. “Sie kommen alle darin überein, daß in einem Haupttheile nur eine kurze, dem Ausdruk der Empfindung angemessene Periode, als der Hauptsatz zum Grund gelegt wird; daß dieser Hauptsatz durch kleinere Zwischengedanken, die sich zu ihm schiken, unterstützt, oder auch unterbrochen wird; daß der Hauptsatz mit diesen Zwischengedanken in verschiedenen Harmonien und Tonarten, und auch mit kleinen melodischen Veränderungen, die dem Hauptausdruk angemessen sind, so oft widerholt wird, bis das Gemüth des Zuhörers hinlänglich von der Empfindung eingenommen ist, und dieselbe gleichsam von allen Seiten her bekommen hat.” Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 2:488. On the question of this entry’s authorship, see Baker and Christensen, Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment, 14. 31 For an overview of primary sources in line with Sulzer in contemporary German and French writings, see Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration, 90–102. 32 “1) eine Hauptempfindung, 2) ähnliche Nebenempfindungen, 3) zergliederte, das heißt, in einzelne Theile aufgelößte Empfindungen, 4) widersprechende und entgegensetzte Empfindungen.” Forkel, “Ueber eine Sonate aus Carl Phil. Emanuel Bachs dritter Sonatensammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber, in F moll,” 32. 72 Forkel and Vogler were writing at a transitional moment in terms of eighteenthcentury music criticism. As Mary Sue Morrow observes, many of the mid-century critics before them had axes to grind, incorporating polemical screeds and a pedantic tone in their reviews of compositions that were usually devastating. By the time of Forkel and Vogler, the image of an overtly egotistical critic eventually returned to a more level-headed tone in writing that harked back to the work of Johann Mattheson at the century’s beginning. Morrow writes: “Music journalism . . . aspired to greater objectivity and required the collaboration of several authors.”33 Editors also understood their task was to reach a wider audience, an agenda that one writer found Forkel himself to do particularly well in the first volume of his Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek: Herr Forkel has undertaken the useful business of making musical works known through criticism . . . still a rather fallow field in need of cultivation, and one more worthy than many others . . . One writes for the learned and the unlearned; and the large number of the latter, whose approval must nonetheless be considered here, often requires a moderate use of reflective thought and a demonstrative writing style.34 Forkel’s and Vogler’s critical enterprises constitute fairly early attempts in the new mode of reaching a wider audience beyond the learned few and embraced sympathetic approaches to understanding new compositions. Their analytical essays that follow employ a variety of techniques to do just that. 33 Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century, 24. Ibid., 19. “Der H. unternimmt ein nützliches Geschäft, musikalische Schriften mit Kritik bekannt zu machen . . . Ein noch ziemlich brachliegendes Feld, das zumal in unsern Zeiten einer fleißigern Kultur bedarf und vor vielen andern würdig ist! . . . Man schreibt für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte, und die größere Zahl der letztern, deren Beyfall hier allerdings in Betrachtung zu ziehen ist, räth oft den mässigern Gebrauch des Tiefsinns und der demonstrativischen Schreibart.” “Musikalisch-kritische bibliothek, von Joh. Nicolaus Forkel,” 187. 34 73 WINTER’S SYMPHONY While Forkel and Vogler conceived of a musical work as a harmonious union of meaning and form that in turn supported a compelling synthesis of nature and freedom, they required analysis to substantiate these claims. Vogler’s discussion of a symphony by Peter Winter in his Betrachtungen represents a rigorous account to plumb for compositional freedom amidst an array of music’s established “natural” properties. Admittedly, the stakes of the review perhaps betray a conflict of interest, considering that Vogler was Winter’s composition teacher at Mannheim.35 As Daniel Heartz notes: “It could be that some of the details that [Vogler] praises are those that, as a teacher, he either suggested or revised.”36 In the same year of the review, Winter would move on to Munich with the Court while Vogler would remain in Mannheim for just a bit longer before his travels to Paris and Sweden. Both figures would have long, successful careers after their time together in Carl Theodor’s renowned court orchestra. Vogler’s reputation requires a bit of rehabilitation. He is usually sidelined as minor figure in the history of music theory and typically labeled as idiosyncratic.37 He sought to refine the harmonic theories of Rameau, improving on the monochord by using a sophisticated Tonmaas to come up with the harmonic proportions from nature, and he 35 The Winter symphony in question is probably a piece of juvenilia. Vogler’s August 1778 account is the closest available identifier to the moment when Winter (b. 1754) composed the symphony, and the only score available is in fact the reduction Vogler provides in the Betrachtungen supplement. While it was never published, the symphony is accounted for as incipit No. 10550 in LaRue, A Catalogue of 18th-Century Symphonies, 204. Even so, it is not included in the catalogue of Winter’s works in Würtz et al., Ignaz Fränzl: Three Symphonies, Peter von Winter: Three Symphonic Works. For more context about the distinctive Mannheim symphonic style prior to Winter, see Murray, “The Symphony in South Germany.” 36 Heartz, “Abt Vogler on the Horn Parts in Peter Winter’s Symphony in D Minor (1778): A View from within the Mannheim Orchestra,” 90. 37 For example, see Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century, 208. 74 believed, along with Forkel, that older music could be “improved” following the refinements, perhaps most evident in his extensive essay of corrections to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.38 Yet he was also a pioneer of roman numeral analysis and harmonic reduction, and his influence is apparent in the writings of his student, the celebrated pedagogue Gottfried Weber, as well as many others.39 Ultimately, some of Vogler’s most valuable work lies in his critical commentary, at the intersection of theory, aesthetics, and—significantly— analysis. The language Vogler used is also noteworthy. The idiosyncratic pedagogue employed equally idiosyncratic German that presents many challenges to the modern reader, doubtless one of the reasons why he has been sidelined in contemporary scholarship. It turns out that this reputation is far from a contemporary development. According to an early biographer of Vogler: “First, he consistently avoided foreign words that could likewise be given in German, and second, he paid homage to the tenet: write as you speak, since the Mannheim and Wurzburg dialect shines through its diction, which . . . incidentally gave the Berlin critics the loveliest occasion for mockery.” As for such mockery, a reviewer of the Betrachtungen observed in a 1778 issue of the Berliner Literatur- und Theaterzeitung: “The author’s pedantry to Germanize all generally accepted coinages borrowed from foreign languages gives the whole work quite an odd character.”40 38 For a detailed account of this essay, see Grave, “Abbé Vogler’s Revision of Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat Mater.’” 39 Today’s roman numeral system most closely resembles Gottfried Weber’s conception. For a discussion of Vogler’s influence and reception see Grave and Grave, In Praise of Harmony: The Teachings of Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, 267–76. 40 “Er erstens consequent alle ausländischen Wörter vermied, die man deutsch ebenso gut geben kann, und zweitens dem Grundsatze huldigte: Schreibe, wie du sprichst; da schimmerten durch seine Diction nicht so selten der Mannheimer und Würzburger Dialect, was, wie wir sogleich sehen werden, nebenbei der Berline Kritik den schönsten Anlass zum Hohn gab. . . . Die Pedanterie des Verfassers, alle aus fremder Sprache entlehnten und allgemein angenommenen Kunstworte zu 75 Even by today’s standards, Vogler’s writings generally confound more than clarify. Jane Stevens notes: “His ‘analytic’ statements are frequently elliptical, and (especially when read in isolation) often appear meaningless or trivial.”41 Often his claims only become clear once the music that he is discussing is considered. Nonetheless, the Betrachtungen contains some of his most interesting writings, offering a venue for the pedagogue to apply his abstract compositional theories to works at hand. While the journal contains several examples of Vogler’s analytical discussions, his serialized review of the Winter symphony most discernably shows Vogler as a sensitive music analyst, a critic eager to explain to the reader how all of the parts of the work coalesced into an impressive totality. Essential to an understanding of Vogler’s analysis is his lengthy introduction, where he outlines rules for how to construct a symphony in general. He writes that the genre “must get the blood going, warm up the imagination, and boldly strike the heart of the listener with harmonic force in order to make the passions malleable and all sensations supple.”42 According to Vogler, symphonies generally ought to be in a major key rather than a minor one, as the minor is weaker for accomplishing this effect. By setting his symphony in D minor, then, Winter has the added challenge of overcoming the impotent minor third. Vogler goes on to explain that the customary modulation in the first half of the opening movement to the dominant in a major key cannot occur in a minor one, as the verdeutschen, gibt dem ganzen Werke ein gar komisches Ansehen u. s. f.” von Schafhäutl, Abt Georg Joseph Vogler, 12. 41 Stevens, “Georg Joseph Vogler and the ‘Second Theme’ in Sonata Form: Some 18th-Century Perceptions of Musical Contrast,” 285. 42 “Sie müssen das Geblüt in eine Wallung sezen, die Fantasie erhizen, und das Herz des Zuhörers mit harmonischer Kraft heftig anfallen, um es zu den Leidenschaften biegsam, und zu allen Empfindungen weich zu machen.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:52. All page numbers cited refer to the original pagination in the Betrachtungen. 76 diatonic dominant triad of in a minor tonality is also minor, leaving the listener to “yawn and fall asleep” from an excess of minor. Instead the composer must modulate to the mediant: “If a musical work is in D minor, the first part closes in F major; ultimately, in order to find the unity of the movement, the same passage [in the second part] is transposed to D minor.”43 Finally, Vogler comments on the meter Winter has chosen, which presents yet another challenge: “The first Allegro should always be spirited and have grandeur, but the 3/4 meter is somewhat sluggish and dallying by nature.” Never one to miss an opportunity for a lesson, Vogler refers to the reader to consult another article from the Betrachtungen for a more thorough explanation of the listlessness of triple meter.44 Vogler’s preamble can easily be dismissed as a pedantic account of what will doom Winter’s symphony, complete with citations to his own technical discussions elsewhere which, indeed, are sprinkled throughout the Betrachtungen. But the introductory remarks are crucial to understanding his subsequent analysis, for in them Vogler establishes symphonic conventions that were construed as “natural,” setting up constraints for Winter to negotiate in his own imaginative ways. Characteristic and unique to the Betrachtungen, 43 “Wenn in einem Tonstücke aus dem weichen D, der erste Theil im harten F schlieset: so wird, um die Einheit der Säze aufs äußerste zu suchen, der nämliche Sin im weichen D wieder angebracht.” Ibid., 1:53. 44 “Das erste Allegro soll immer feurig sein, und Pracht haben, der 3/4 Takt aber hat in seiner Natur etwas schleppendes und tändelndes.” Ibid., 1:56. According to Vogler: “6/8 is much more spirited, as the two beats of every measure are much like each other. The downbeat is indeed stronger than the upbeat, but the same quantity of notes belong to both. Thus the effect might not be so noticeable. But if, like in the meter of 3/4, the downbeat belongs to two thirds of the measure and the upbeat to one, it so follows that this upbeat is weaker and therefore the measure must be more sluggish.” (“Der Sechsachtels ist viel feuriger, da die zwei Bestandttheile jeden Schlages einander so ziemlich gleich sind. Der Niederschlag ist zwar kräftiger als der Aufschlag, wenn aber die nämlich Anzahl von Noten beiden zukömt: so kann diese Wirkung nicht so auffallend sein. Wenn aber, wie im 3/4 Takt, der Neiderschlag zwei Drittel vom Schlage, und der Aufschlag nur ein Drittel bekömt: so folgt, daß dieser Aufschlag viel schwächer, und deswegen der Takt schleppender sein müsse.”) Ibid. 77 Vogler’s analytical discussion was in the form of a numbered list of observations, corresponding to numbers printed directly on a full score in the journal’s supplement. Vogler includes the complete string score of all three movements, filled in with figured bass notation. Undoubtedly this was an overwhelming amount of data for the average Mannheimer to process.45 The content of the numbered list ranges from Vogler’s sensitive interpretive remarks that will be taken up below to more straightforward theoretical observations (e.g. “This is an example of a deceptive cadence in a minor mode”), with Vogler occasionally referring to other articles in his journal in case the reader wants a more extensive discussion of such theoretical matters (e.g. “The viola’s C♯ stands an augmented fifth above the root of F, [a topic] which the Tonschule addresses extensively”).46 The analysis commences with Vogler recognizing the Hauptsatz (see EX. 2.2). He initially identifies it in the first four measures, but then expands it to encompass the new material in the measures that follow: “After the Hauptsatz [mm. 1–4] a gentle idea follows [mm. 5–8], which also by that very fact becomes the Hauptsatz since it occupies the listener similarly.”47 Vogler’s underlying claim is that, despite there being a certain amount 45 For further consideration of Vogler’s musical examples in relation to his criticism, see Funk, “Die Gegenstände zu Voglers Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule—die Notenbeispiele des Lehrwerkes aus musikpädogischem Blickwinkel.” 46 “Dies ist ein Beispiel eines verstellten Schlußfalles in der weichen Leiter.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:58. “Das cis der Bratsche ist die übermäsige Fünfte zum Hauptklange F, wovon die Tonschule ausführlich handelt.” Ibid., 60. 47 “Nach dem Hauptsaze folgt gleich ein sanfter Sinn, der eben dadurch auch gleichsam zum Hauptsaz wird; weil er den Zuhörer gleich einnimt.” Ibid., 57. The German word Sinn is typically translated as “sense” or “meaning,” yet Vogler’s use here seems to refer to the musical material at m. 4. Following Jane Stevens, I translate it as “idea.” See Stevens, “Georg Joseph Vogler and the ‘Second Theme’ in Sonata Form: Some 18th-Century Perceptions of Musical Contrast,” 296. Vogler’s analysis takes the form of a numbered list, with each number directing the reader to a corresponding number in the score supplement included with the issue. I omit these numbers for clarity, instead offering measure numbers when appropriate. 78 Allegro 3 & b 4 œ ‰ œ œ œ # œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ { ? b 43 œ ‰ œ œ œ #œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ j œœ œ œ œ œ™ œ œ œ œ œ #˙™ & b #œ j œ œ œ œ™ œ œ ? b ‰ œ œ œ œ œ #œ ˙™ 8 { œ̇ &b 15 { œ œ œ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ J p œ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œbœ œ œ ™ ‰ œ œ œ œ ˙™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙™ œ j j j œ™ œ œ #œ̇ œ œ™ œnœ œ̇ œ œ™ œ œ #œ˙ œ ˙ ™ œœ # œ œœ™™ œj œ # œ œ ™ ? œ œ œ™ b J j œ œ œ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙™ ˙™ j j œ™ œ #œ̇ œ œ™ nœ œ œ œ # œ œ ™ œj œ # œ œ ™ œj œ œ™ œ œ œ™ œ J J nœ˙ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ #œœ ˙™ œœ œj œœ # œ œœ™™ œj œ # œ œ œ œ œ œ™ œ nœ œ ™ J J J œ œœœ œ œ œœ œ™ œj œ œ œ œ Example 2.2: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 1–21 (reduction) of contrast in the Hauptsatz, it is nonetheless a coherent bank of regulating passions and motives for the movement to develop. His most effective discussion follows with the transition, offering a vivid account of how each moment dazzles and contrasts while still remaining congruent with the movement’s rational framework. For instance, at m. 21, Vogler relishes the basses getting the first theme, eventually setting up the transition to the mediant, complete with wedge crescendos typical of the Mannheim sound (see EX. 2.3). Yet Vogler does not merely care about modulating to the mediant—this is simply where the music must go, as he outlines in the preamble. It is how Winter accomplishes this feat, which includes intriguing changes at m. 28: “These runs of the first violin, the staccato of 79 21 &b { ? b œj œœ J œ œ ‰ œj œ & b œJ œ 27 { ? œ b œœj œœj œœ œœ J J œœ œœj J j j œœj œœ œœ œœj œœj œœ œœ œœj bœœj œœ œœ œœj œœ œœ œœ œœ J J J J J J J J œj œ œ j j œ œ œ #œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj #œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ ‰ œj œ œ J J œj œ J j ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ œœœ ˙˙˙ ™™™ æ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj j œ œ˙˙˙™™™œ æ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœ œœœ ˙˙˙ ™™™ æ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ˙˙æ™ œ œ#œ œ œ œ œ#œæ œ œ œ œ˙˙æ™ œ œ#œ œ œ œ œ#œæ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ™ œ b ˙ œ œ ™ & ˙™œ œ #œœ #œœ æœ æœ ææœ ææœ æ æ æ ?b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 31 { œ œœ #œ œ œr œ œ œ œrnœ œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ & b ææ˙ ™ œ æ æœ œ œœ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ ? b œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ 34 { r œ œ œ œœ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ œ œ ˙ Œ Œ Example 2.3: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 21–38 (reduction) the bass, and the pattering of the middle voices warm up the imagination of the listener.”48 Vogler’s agenda is to show the creative ways in which Winter accomplishes the conventional transition from a minor tonic to its mediant. The regulative power of the Hauptsatz shows itself in what we would now consider the second group, as Vogler claims when he recognizes the thematic material at the beginning of the second group originates from mm. 5–8 (see EX. 2.4): “Now a gentle 48 “Diese Läufe der ersten Geige; das Abstossen des Baß; Prasseln der Mittelstimmen erhizen die Fantasie des Zuhörers.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:58. 80 Œ & b ˙™ œ œ 39 { ? b ˙™ j œ˙™™ œ œ ˙™ ˙™ 46 Œ & b œj œœœ œœ œœ œ œ ˙ nœ œ ? b { œ bœ & b n ‰˙ œ œ nœ ™ ˙™ ?b ˙™ 51 { &b { ˙ ™™ j œ˙ ™™ œ œ œœ ˙™ œ œ ˙˙ ™™ ‰ j œ œ œ™ ˙ ˙ ™ œ nœ œ œ œ œ ˙™ œœ J ˙™ ˙™ ‰ ˙™ j œ œ œ œ™ œ œ ˙˙™ œ œ ™ œJ ˙™ ˙™ ˙ œ#œ ˙™ j ‰ j nœ œ œ ™ œ nœ œ# œ n ˙ ™ œ nœ œ ˙ j œ ‰ œ œ œ ˙™ ˙™ ˙™ j œ œ œ# œ bœ œ #œ œ œ œ œ nœ nœ œ œ œ nœj œ œ œj œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ œ œ œJ ˙™ ˙™ n˙ ™ ˙™ ˙™ ˙™ ˙™ œ œ œ œ œ ˙™ ˙™ ˙™ œ œ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ æ™ æ™ ? b ˙˙™ æ 56 œœ ˙™ œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ æ™ ˙æ™ ˙™ æ œ œœœœœœœœœœœ ˙˙ ™ ™ æ˙ ™ œ œœœ œœ œ ˙˙˙™™™ œ œ æ æ ˙™ ˙™ æ Example 2.4: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 39–59 (reduction) idea returns, full of more varied sequences of creeping basslines as the melody goes along more simply and uniformly.”49 He is also concerned with how the recycled material is altered in order to provide a fresh presentation. Vogler utilized the Hauptsatz model to make sense of how a movement was ordered, revealing a sophisticated conception of musical form typically not associated with the pedagogue. For instance, following Fred 49 “Nun kömt wieder ein sanfter Sinn, der mit desto mannigfaltigern Tonfolgen der schleichenden Hauptklänge angefüllt ist, als einfacher und sich gleichender das Gesang fortwandert.” Ibid., 1:59. 81 Ritzel’s commentary in his 1974 Die Entwicklung der “Sonatenform” im musiktheoretischen Schrifttum des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, Jane Stevens claims: “Vogler fails to attach formal significance to passages in his musical examples that constitute clearcut ‘second themes’ according to standard textbook analyses.”50 Yet, as Stevens notes, the conception of sonata form as a movement organized by two distinct themes is an anachronism for Vogler. He seems deeply invested in elucidating the formal significance of passages, but in ways that conformed to an eighteenth-century understanding that embraced the Hauptsatz model. Even so, in the foregoing Winter example, Vogler acknowledges musical contrast by recognizing two discrete elements in the Hauptsatz right from the start.51 After the theme is presented, the orchestra incorporates a few tricks to conclude the first part: “Two dominants in succession, G to C [m. 54], and C to F [m. 56], prompt the ear quite strongly; now the first part hurries to the end. Only a small interlude conveys the contemporary power of the orchestra [m. 67], and [then there is] the final close of the first part [m. 74].”52 Most striking is Vogler observing that the music “hurries” to conclude the exposition with a definitive authentic cadence in F major, or what we would now term the essential expositional closure.53 To Vogler, Winter’s true genius lies in his music 50 Stevens, “Georg Joseph Vogler and the ‘Second Theme’ in Sonata Form: Some 18th-Century Perceptions of Musical Contrast,” 281. 51 Ibid., 283. Stevens notes that Vogler does this in his analysis of an H. F. K. A. von Kerpen sonata as well. 52 “Zwei fünfte Töne hintereinander G zum C, C zum F ermuntern das Gehör sehr kräftig, nun eilet der erste Theil dem Ende zu. Nur ein kleines Zwischenspiel vermittelts gegenwärtige Stärke des Orchesters, und den endlichen Schluß des ersten Theiles.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:59. 53 Following sonata theory, the movement follows a “Type 2” path, as the sonata completes two thematic rotations since the recapitulation omits the P-space. See chapter 17 of Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth Century Sonata. 82 presenting some sort of urgency to finish the first half—rather than driven merely by convention, the work itself seems motivated to reach the cadence. Vogler spends most of his commentary on the exposition, leaving a far less detailed discussion of the “second part.” Nonetheless he continues to recognize important thematic entrances and harmonic episodes. At the beginning of the development at mm. 80 ff., he comments, “All utilized notes variably alternate with each other, until finally the Hauptsatz enters in G minor [m. 102], and modulates through a deceitful turn to B-flat major [m. 106].”54 Vogler then recalls that the following material which originally followed the Hauptsatz at the start of the piece casts itself in a different light (see EX. 2.5): “The above phrase [m. 116], which was entirely indifferently incorporated by the thirteenth measure, contrasts here through its unexpected entrance, and even deceives, as the B♭ intrudes in a surprising manner after the indicated deception [m. 106].” The retransition follows, whose harmonic progression consists of a convention toggling back and forth between dominant and tonic, A major and D minor, over a dominant pedal. Vogler considers the passage quite resourceful, which “serves in order to establish the tonic of D minor even more impressively, where the two roots D and A fight each other.” Finally, we arrive at the truncated recapitulation that begins with the second group, and Vogler concludes his analysis of the movement with “Now nothing new follows except for new twists on the old.”55 54 “Schwankend wechseln alle verwandete Töne miteinander ab, bis endlich der Hauptsaz im weichen G eintrit, und durch eine betrügerische Wendung ins harte B aus weichet.” Vogler, Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule, 1778, 1:59. 55 “Obiger Saz, der beim dreizehnten Schlage ganz gleichgültig aufgenommen wurde, contrastiret hier, durch seinen unvermutheten Eintrit, und täuscht eben so, als überraschend das B nach dem angezeigten Betruge einfiel. Um den Hauptton das weiche D eindruckvoller zu bestimmen, dienet 83 b˙™ j œ j bœ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ ˙ ™ ‰ ‰ ‰ b œ œ œ & œ œ œ #œ œ æ J œ œ œ œ œ b œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ b œ b œ j œ œ œ ? #œ ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J bœ ‰ œ œ œ 102 { ˙™ b˙ ™ æ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ b œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ b ˙ b ˙ œ ˙˙ ™™™ b ˙˙ ™™™ æ æ j j œ bœ œ j ? œ ‰ œ bœ œ bœ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ bœ ‰ œ œ b˙˙ ™™ &æ 107 { b˙™ ˙™ æ œ œbœ œ œ œ bœ œ œ & ˙æ™™ ˙ nœ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œæ nœ œ œbœœ œ œ œ bœœœ œ bœ œ˙ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ æ bœ œ œ˙ ˙˙™ ™™ ˙ b æ æ æ æ æ œ œ œ œ bœ bœ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ 112 { ? œ œœ nœ̇ &b 116 { œ™ œ œ #œ œ ™ œ™ ? œ œj œ b & ˙™ œj b#œ̇ œ œ™ nœj œ̇ œ b œj œ J œ #œ œ ™ œ œ™ œj œj œ ˙™ œj œ œ #œ œ œ ? œ™ œ #œ ˙™ J æ 121 { œ œ™ œj œ # œ œ ™ œ™ œ œ J œj œ œ œ ˙œj™ œ œ œj # œj œ b˙ ™ æ œ œj #œ̇ œ œ™ nœj œ̇ b œ b œj œ J œ #œ œ ™ œ œ™ œ™ œj œ # œ œ ™ œ™ œ œ J œ œj œj œ J œj œ #œ œ #œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ œ œ œ ˙æ ˙™ æ Example 2.5: Winter, Symphony in D minor, mvt. 1, mm. 102–24 (reduction) die gegenwärtige schwankende Harmonie, wo die zwei Töne D und A mit einander kämpfen. Nun folgt Nichts mehr neues, aber neue Wendungen des Alten.” Ibid., 1:60. 84 Vogler is devoted to showing that the opening movement’s sequence of events unfolds from an introductory Hauptsatz, and while the events conform with the established formal and meaningful constraints, they nonetheless appear creative. Throughout the review, individual features, whether of orchestration, harmony, or phrase structure, stand out in stark relief as imaginative. Vogler’s treatment of meaning is far subtler, yet also confirms its homology with form. For instance, he deems the Hauptsatz material from mm. 5–8 “a gentle idea,” which forms the basis for the material of the second group. Another moment pregnant with meaning occurs at m. 116, where Vogler recognizes that the thematic material utilized has an effect altogether different from its prior presentation at m. 13. It has an entirely new structural context, being prepared differently in the development via an “unexpected entrance.” Implicit throughout Vogler’s discussion of thematic material and harmonic structure is an associated expressive content, as he claims in his aforementioned discussion of key relations in the Betrachtungen, maintaining that musical meaning is disclosed simultaneously with form. Forkel’s analysis will evince a similar impulse. B AC H ’ S RO N D O C. P. E. Bach’s move to Hamburg marks a moment in the composer’s career when he expanded his creative output to a variety of genres for the musical marketplace, probably supported by the city’s expanding community of potential consumers in the form of a bourgeois class. In particular vogue was the accompanied sonata, a genre for a group of three musicians, consisting of a pianist as the essential player and a violinist and cellist as 85 the supporting cast usually doubling melody and bassline.56 The rondo proved particularly popular as well, becoming a battleground for aesthetic merit. According to Hans-Günter Ottenberg: “No doubt owing in part to its frequent use by South German composers [the rondo] was completely rejected by some theorists.”57 Forkel’s extensive review of a set of Bach’s accompanied sonatas serves as a significant contribution to the debate. He prefaces his analysis of the rondo finale of Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, with: “Until now [the rondo] has hardly been used by keyboard instruments, but if we consider how the most fashionable pieces of this genre have little intrinsic inner worth, and have had almost since its emergence, then with this case we must rejoice rather than complain.”58 The introduction clarifies the stakes of the analysis to follow. Indeed, there is a lot riding on Forkel’s interest in proving the success of Bach’s rondo: he must salvage the aesthetic merit of the genre in toto. In order to show that Bach’s rondo is a success, Forkel establishes a set of rational principles that a rondo ought to follow. His review-analysis takes the form of a set of laws of the rondo alongside a commentary of moments in Bach’s movement that illustrate them. A paradigmatic model of classical analysis, Forkel’s commentary aims to show both that Bach simultaneously conforms to the rules and incorporates imaginative twists. Or, starting from the other side, and using a metaphor from his Sonata Theory, Forkel shows that Bach successfully dams the rushing torrents of the human imagination. To begin his 56 For a classic discussion of the genre’s origins and development, see Newman, “Concerning the Accompanied Clavier Sonata.” 57 Ottenberg, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 129. 58 “Diese Musikgattung ist bisher auf Clavierinstrumenten noch wenig gebraucht worden; wenn wir aber bedenken, wie wenig wahren innern Werth die meisten modischen Stücke dieser Gattung haben, und beynahe seit ihrer Entstehung gehabt haben, so müssen wir uns über diesen Umstand mehr freuen, als beklagen.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:281. 86 so-named “short rondo analysis” (“kleine Analyse des Rondeau”), Forkel outlines the general structure of the genre: The rondo must have a main idea that, as in the poetic roundelay, is mixed and alternated with secondary ideas which flow outward from it, and is repeated from time to time. The first law that can be given for the construction of a rondo thus aims at this main idea. Each phrase in music, just like each idea in poetry or oratory, which is executed in part with a certain luster, or is to be repeated often, must have an inner value which makes it worthy of that particular luster or frequent repetition. Now since the Hauptsatz of a rondo, although not always brought forth with particular luster, is occasionally repeated, so follows that it by itself must have all properties which could make it worthy of more repetition and find it capable to deter the weariness of the listener.59 The rondo’s main idea is what we would now simply call the rondo theme, which Forkel also declares as constituting the Hauptsatz. Forkel then claims that he will mix the theory with practice: “But in order not to be too long-winded, we wish to link the brief theory together with the short analysis, and therefore similarly engage with the main idea of the present rondo.”60 As it so happens, Forkel claims that Bach’s rondo theme passes the test and abides by the first law: “We think this phrase is so beautiful that we believe it cannot 59 “Wir haben schon gesagt, daß das Rondeau einen Hauptgedanken haben müsse, der wie in dem poetischen Rundgesange mit darausfließenden Nebengedanken untermischt und abgewechselt, und von Zeit zu Zeit wiederhold wird. Das erste Gesetz, welches sich für die Einrichtung eines Rondeaus geben läßt, zielt also auf diesen Hauptgedanken. Jeder Satz in der Musik, so wie jeder Gedanke in der Poesie oder Redekunst, welcher theils mit besonderm Schimmer vorgetragen, oder öfters wiederholt werden soll, muß einen inner Werth haben, der ihn dieses besondern Schimmers, oder einer öftern Wiederholung würdig macht. Da nun der Hauptsatz eines Rondeaus, obgleich nicht immer mit besonderm Schimmer vorgetragen, doch öfters wiederholt wird, so folgt daraus, daß er alle Eigenschaften an sich haben müsse, die ihn dieser öftern Wiederholung würdig machen können, und im Stande find, den Ueberdruß der Zuhörer abzuhalten.” Ibid., 2:282–83. Throughout his review, Forkel uses a boldface Fraktur script for the French word “Rondeau,” which here is translated into its modern English equivalent in plain typeface. 60 “Um aber nicht zu weitläufig zu seyn, wollen wir die kurze Theorie zugleich mit der kleinen Analyse verbinden, und rücken daher gleich den Hauptgedanken des gegenwärtigen Rondeaus ein.” Ibid., 2:283. 87 ° & ∑ ∑ #C # œ ?# œ { œ Ÿ œ œ ten. œœ œœΩ œœΩ œ œ œœΩ œΩ œ œ œœ œ œ œ º œœ º ˙ œ œ œ #œ œΩ J ‰ Œ ‰ j œ º ‰ Œ Œ ten. T m œ œ œ # œœ J ˙˙ j #œœœ̇ ˙ œ ™T œJ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ #œ œ # œ œ n œ œ œ œ nœ 3 ˙ ˙ 3 3 nœΩ œΩ Ÿ œ œ œnœ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœ ˙ ˙ ∑ ?# œœ œœ ∑ ∑ Œ œœ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ Example 2.6: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 1–12 œΩ œœ œΩ œº œœœœœ œº Œ Œ Œ œ º œΩ œΩ œ œ œΩ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ º º Œ ˙ r œœ œ # œ œ œ œ œ mœ#œ #œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ m œ #œ œ ™ nœœœœ œ œ œ œ œœ & p f ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ ?# ˙ ˙ œ œ T m œ œ œœ œœ f ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙˙ œΩ 3 ∑ { œ f # & œ w ∑ ˙˙ ˙ ˙ w #œ & œ œœ ? # ˙˙ °9 œ ∑ ∑ T m œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙˙ ˙˙ ˙ ∏∏∏∏∏ & ∑ ∑ T m œ œ œ œ & œ œ p ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ? #C °6 ¢ ∑ f ? #C { ¢ Grazioso e poco allegro ∏∏∏∏∏ ¢ #C œ œ œ Ω Ω Ω œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœΩ œ œ œœ œœ œœ º º Œ œ œ œ 88 be heard often enough. It is extremely pleasant, simple, clear, and comprehensible, without being poor, and yielding new enjoyment upon each repetition.”61 The second law of Forkel’s “short rondo analysis” is that the rondo theme must be able to be dissected into its constituent parts for the work to develop—it should basically embody the properties of the Hauptsatz: “It is still also required that [the rondo theme] can be broken down and altered in a good way, in order to meet the requirement for diversity necessary in all the arts, and also so as not to weary the attention of the listener through too much monotony.”62 Here the review takes a captivating turn to analysis. Forkel proceeds to moments in the rondo movement that illustrate this principle, particularly where Bach alters the theme with embellishments, providing three musical examples of the changes. The theme itself is an eight-measure parallel period (see EX. 2.6), and Forkel highlights the first two measures of the antecedent phrase in the theme’s initial repetition (mm. 9–10) and final one (mm. 109–10). He also points out the first two measures of the consequent phrase in the initial repetition (mm. 13–14). Next Forkel tackles the principles upon which the rondo’s episodes are based. In accordance with the Hauptsatz model, he declares that the episodes should emerge from the main theme: The episodes (couplets) must spring from [the Hauptsatz], and just as a so-called musical sentence is brief and succinct, they are best when they paraphrase it, as it 61 Adapted from Fishman, “Critical Text as Cultural Nexus: The Journalistic Writings of J. N. Forkel, C. F. Cramer, and J. F. Reichardt,” 84. “Wir halten diesen Satz für so schön, daß wir glauben, man könne sich desselben kaum statt hören. Er ist äußerst angenehm, simpel, deutlich und faßlich, ohne arm zu seyn, und bey jeder Wiederholung hört man ihn mit neuem Vergnügen.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:283–84. 62 Fishman, “Critical Text as Cultural Nexus: The Journalistic Writings of J. N. Forkel, C. F. Cramer, and J. F. Reichardt,” 85. “Wird auch noch erfordert, daß er zergliedert und auf eine gute Art verändert werden könne, um auch dadurch der in allen Künsten nothwendigen Mannichfaltigkeit beförderlich zu seyn, und die Aufmerksamkeit der Zuhörer durch zu viele Einerleyheit nicht zu ermüden.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:285. 89 were, and in this way allow it to appear through each repetition more definite, more established, and, if we may say, as a newly empowered sentence. Breaking down of individual parts, [employing] suitable subsidiary ideas in connection with the main theme (and with which the main theme has an affinity), variations, transposition into related (or, if it can happen in a good way, distant keys), are audible devices by which this type of paraphrase can best be accomplished. They must necessarily be preferred to those cases in which a rondo is merely made of many individual parts, [rather than] a whole originating out of many individual parts. The episodes ought to tinker with material from the Hauptsatz, making its reprise seem refreshing and, above all, necessary. Forkel continues by outlining that the “paraphrasing” of the main theme can occur through transposition: “Concerning the transposition into related or distant keys, it must be remarked that one must proceed cautiously in order to make the transitional modulations as smooth as possible, and also through them to assist in assuring that the main idea is not severed from its necessary connection with the subsidiary ideas, but will only be the more supported and confirmed through them.”63 Much like Vogler, Forkel considers key relations to be critical for the regulation of a work’s musical material. In his most sensitive analysis, Forkel discusses a few examples that demonstrate how Bach’s modulations to distant realms compellingly connect to the fabric of the movement. He starts by describing the harmonic structure of the movement’s initial events 63 Adapted from Fishman, “Critical Text as Cultural Nexus: The Journalistic Writings of J. N. Forkel, C. F. Cramer, and J. F. Reichardt,” 86. “Die Zwischensätze (Couplets) müssen aus ihm entspringen, und da er gleichsam eine musikalische Sentenz, das heißt, kurz und bündig ist, so sind sie am besten, wenn sie ihn gleichsam paraphrasiren, und ihn dadurch bey jeder Wiederholung bestätigter, erwiesener, und, wenn wir uns so ausdrücken dürfen, als eine aufs neue bekräftigte Sentenz erscheinen lassen. Zergliederungen einzelner Theile desselben, ähnliche mit ihm in Verbindung stehende Nebengedanken, Veränderungen desselben, Versetzungen desselben in verwandte, oder, wenn es auf eine gute Art geschehen kann, entfernte Tonarten von der Haupttonart, sind lauter Hülfsmittel, welche diese Art von Paraphrase am besten bewerkstelligen können, und müssen nothwendig den bloßen Einfällen, die ein Rondeau zu vielen einzelnen Stücken, aber nicht zu einem aus vielen einzelnen Stücken bestehenden Ganzen machen vorgezogen werden.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:286. 90 (mm. 1–28): “The tonic is G major. And now, once the main theme is stated and completely finished in this key, a subsidiary passage enters that takes the harmony from the tonic to D major, and concludes with the first repetition of the main idea in this key.”64 Forkel uses “Hauptgedanke” in place of “Hauptsatz,” with “Gedanke” signifying a more abstract conception of musical material, akin to Vogler’s “Sinn” and infusing the concrete phrase with human creativity. The music that does follow explores more foreign keys, so Forkel’s description attempts to capture the thread of its logic at mm. 28 ff. (see EX. 2.7): “Here the composer considers the key of D major as the dominant of G minor, and thus modulates by means of a short subsidiary thought through a number of measures in G minor, until he comes to a slight point of repose on the dominant itself; after a brief general pause, which is just enough to resolve the feeling of the dominant, the main idea is transposed into B-flat major.”65 The sudden shift to B-flat is far less jarring after the excursion in G minor, and the half-cadence at m. 33 with a subsequent pause offers a moment of closure before the harmonic digression. To Forkel, this sequence of events occurs in a comprehensible manner—its inventiveness is balanced by a rational framework. 64 “Die Haupttonart ist G dur. So wie nun der Hauptgedanke in dieser Tonart einmal vorgetragen und vollkommen geendigt ist, tritt ein Nebensatz ein, welcher die Harmonie aus der Haupttonart, ins D dur führt, und mit der ersten Wiederholung des Hauptgedankens in dieser Tonart schließt.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:287. 65 Fishman, “Critical Text as Cultural Nexus: The Journalistic Writings of J. N. Forkel, C. F. Cramer, and J. F. Reichardt,” 89. “Hier sieht der Compositor die Tonart D dur, für die Harmonie der Dominante von G moll an, und modulirt also vermittelst eines kleinen Nebengedankens einige Takte hindurch im G moll, bis er auf der Dominante desselben einen kleinen Ruhepunkt macht, und nach einer kurzen allgemeinen Pause, welche das Gefühl dieser Dominante auszulöschen gerade hinreichend ist, den Hauptgedanken ins B dur versetzt.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:287. 91 °28 & ¢ # œº ‰ œº ?# Œ œΩ #œ º œº œº ?# °31 & ¢ # ?# Ó ˙ Œ œ œ ˙ # ?# #œ œ œ œ œ ˙ & ˙ { p Œ ‰ œœœ œ œbœ™ w w n œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ Ω Œ œœ Œ œ º ˙ n œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ mf Œ ‰ œJ Ó Œ œ ‰ J mœ œ œ œr b œ œr œ œ b œ œ œ b œ œ bT œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ Ó bœ œ J œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ p # & œœœœœœ { œº œ œ j œ Ÿ bœ œ Ó œ œ ∑ Ó ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ T mœ œ bœ T m n œ b œ œ œ b œ œ ˙ b œ˙ œ n˙ œ n ˙ b ˙˙˙ b b˙ b˙ ˙ p ∑ Example 2.7: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 28–35 Next Forkel brings attention to the wildest harmonic episode in the movement, at the climactic buildup before the final return of the main theme (see EX. 2.8). Just prior to this, the rondo theme appeared with a full-throated fortissimo in the subdominant at m. 77, and the music modulated back to the tonic with a dissolving consequent phrase at m. 81. By m. 87, all of the instruments contribute to a passage of dominant prolongation on D major. But then something strange happens at m. 92: the accompanying strings drop out 92 and the keyboard holds an E-flat in the bass after articulating a C♯ and G in the upper treble register. Forkel is quite impressed by what happens next: A bolder, but also more beautiful phrase more effectively connected with the totality follows, where the transition is achieved through an enharmonic change of harmony, as an augmented sixth—after a small pause held above [in the treble]— becomes a minor seventh. This enharmonic change of harmony is so exquisite, and is such a beautiful effect as well, when as masterfully employed as it is here, that we dare not suggest imitation to our composers who occupy themselves with the rondo most of all. It is not enough to make a bold move: one must be able to do it with certainty and even know to withdraw from it in a good manner as well. Thus boldness is not everything.66 All instruments return after the fermata at m. 93 and softly play the rondo them in the key of E-flat, and so the pre-dominant Italian augmented sixth chord at m. 92 is respelled as an E-flat dominant seventh chord, now functioning as a local V7/IV. It is also the first and only time in the whole movement that the rondo theme begins on something other than a tonic chord. Yet Forkel also takes pains to show that the boldness of this moment must occur alongside a graceful retreat back into the rest of the work. He proceeds to explain this principle by using a lengthy metaphor: the work is akin to a labyrinth for the listener to get lost in, and they should not notice the effort it takes to escape it: “One must feel confidently in control and be master of all possible means, in order to extricate oneself in the best way from a labyrinth into which one has gotten entangled due to boldness; and 66 “Eine kühnere, aber auch noch schönere und im Zusammenhang des Ganzen wirksamere Wendung ist folgende, wo der Uebergang durch eine enharmonische Verwechslung der Harmonie bewerkstelligt ist, indem eine übermäßige Sexte, nach einem kleinen darüber angebrachten Ruhepunkt, für eine kleine Septime genommen wird. So vortrefflich aber auch diese enharmonische Verwechslung der Harmonie ist, und so schöne Wirkung sie auch thut, wenn sie so meisterhalft gebraucht ist wie hier, so wagen wir es doch nicht, sie unsern Componisten, die sich am meisten mit dem Rondeau beschäftigen, zur Nachahmung zu empfehlen; es ist nicht genug, einen kühnen Schritt zu thun, man muß ihn mit Sicherheit thun können, und sich noch außerdem mit einer guten Art wieder zurückzuziehen wissen. Also Kühnheit thut es nicht allein.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:288. 93 T m œ̇ nœ # œ̇ œ & œ œ ˙˙ 77 { ? # ˙˙ ff T m T œ œ̇ n œœ ˙ œ œ ™ œ œJ œœ nœœ œœ n˙˙ ˙ Œ̇ œ n˙ œœº nœœ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ º º º º º ˙ n˙ œœ T m #œ œ œœ œœ ˙ nœ ˙˙ ˙˙ p r œ œnœ # œ œ œ œnœ œ m œ œ nœmœ #œ œ nœœœœ œ œœœœ #œœ œ#mœ œ œ œ# œ œ n œ œœœ œ œ œœœ # # œ n œ œ # œ œ œ & œ J J ffj j œœ œ # # ˙ œ Ω œ̇ œ œ̇ œΩ ?# nœ # Œ Œ n # nœœœ & J œœ̇j n ?# & { ∏∏∏∏∏ ∏∏∏∏∏ 85 87 ∏∏∏∏∏ ∏∏∏∏∏ ∏∏∏∏∏ { { ∏∏∏∏∏ 82 # œΩ ?# Œ œ mœ œ œ œ# œ œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ mœ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œΩ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ º Ωœ Ωœ œΩ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œΩ Œ œ œ º Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œº œΩ Œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ Œ # œΩ nœ œ œœœœ œœœœ œ# œ œ œ œ #œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œr œ #œ œ œ œ Ωœ ? # Œ œΩ œ Œ ≈ œ 89 & { œ#œ #œ œ U # œ œ œ# œ œ œ Œ Ó & 91 { ?# ∑ Œ U b˙™ T T Tb m m bœ œ #œ œ nœ ™ b œ b œ b œ b œ œ œ J œ bœ œ nœ nœœ pp ˙˙ Œ bœ n˙ b˙ bb ˙˙˙ w b˙ ˙ bb˙˙ Example 2.8: Bach, Keyboard Trio in G, W. 90/2, H. 523, mvt. 3, mm. 77–95 (piano part) 94 the listener must not be led to know the difficulties that it has cost to come out of it.”67 Forkel also admonishes the rondo composers of the marketplace for their inability to accomplish this landscape feat. As Annette Richards has pointed out, music critics of the late-eighteenth century often relied on the metaphor of landscape design and gardening to describe the aesthetic experience of music, and so Forkel touches on larger themes here.68 At the moment of Bach’s enharmonic respelling, the listener really does feel lost. It is the duty of the composer, and also of Forkel’s “short rondo analysis,” to intelligibly lay out a path back to more familiar terrain. Forkel highlights Bach’s own graceful retreats back into the rest of the labyrinth by returning to the aforementioned moments of harmonic intrigue, showing how they effect a seamless transition back to the main tonic. In the first example, when the rondo theme gets transposed to B-flat, the music transitions back when “the harmony after the end of the Hauptsatz is restored again in G minor by means of a subsidiary clause, and modulates as follows to the tonic.” Forkel includes an excerpt of mm. 47–60, a passage which begins with the tonicization of G major through its dominant. He continues: “In the second case, where the digression was bolder and more distant, the entangling is also more daring, yet invariably the feeling of the digression is very gradually lost, and is gently pulled away to the feeling of the tonic.”69 Forkel then excerpts mm. 95–101, the passage that connects the 67 Kramer, “The New Modulation of the 1770s: C. P. E. Bach in Theory, Criticism, and Practice,” 573. “Man muß Kräfte in sich fiihlen, und aller möglichen Mittel mächtig seyn, um sich mit der besten Art aus einem Labyrinthe, in welchem man sich durch Kühnheit verwickelt hat, wiederum herauszuwickeln, und man muß dem Zuhörer kaum merken lassen, daß es Mühe gekostet hat, wiederum herauszukommen.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:289. 68 With particular regard to the criticism of C. P. E. Bach’s music, see chapter 2 of Richards, The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque. 69 “Wird die Harmonie nach Endigung des Hauptsatzes wiederum ins G moll vermittelst eines Nebensatzes zurückgeführt, und auf folgende Weise in die Haupttonart hinein modulirt”; “Im zweyten Fall, wo die Versetzung kühner und entfernter war, ist auch die Herauswickelung gewagter, 95 digression triggered by the enharmonic change with the return of the rondo theme in the tonic. To Richard Kramer, Forkel’s discussion emphasizes “the imperative of a remote, enharmonic modulation to justify itself,” thereby highlighting the changing practice of modulations in the 1770s as ones that became “disruptive and generative.”70 Forkel concludes his “short rondo analysis” by rearticulating the foundational principle of the balance between freedom and nature, again appropriating the fire metaphor from his Sonata Theory essay: Therefore, invigorated by the fire of genius and refined by reason, every music genre can thrive, be it also what it wills. Just one of these two powers by itself does not suffice. They must both come together. Genius must curb itself beside reason and be guided by it, so that it does not waste its fire unnecessarily, and instead of a useful influence on everything, it spreads and causes damage and devastation.71 Forkel’s review continues to explore moments of other sonatas from the set of Bach’s published set, usually sticking to moments he finds the most striking. Taken by itself, his “short rondo analysis” offers a paradigmatic model of analysis and has fundamental similarities with Vogler’s review of the first movement of Winter’s symphony. What is most striking is that in spite of Forkel’s concern for outlining the rational principles for a rondo’s construction, he is most interested in the moments when Bach stretches the aber doch immer so sein, daß man das Gefühl der Versetzung sehr allmählig verliert, und sanft zum Gefühl der Haupttonart mit fortgezogen wird.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:289–91. 70 Kramer, “The New Modulation of the 1770s: C. P. E. Bach in Theory, Criticism, and Practice,” 573. 71 “Also, vom Feuer eines Genies belebt, und vom Verstande cultivirt, kann jede Musikgattung gedeyhen, sie sey auch welche sie wolle. Nur eine von diesen beyden Kräften allein, thut es noch nicht. Sie müssen beyde zusammen kommen. Das Genie muß sich von der Vernunft einen Zaum anlegen, und leiten lassen, wenn es nicht oft sein Feuer unnütz verschwenden, und anstatt eines nützlichen Einflusses auf alles, worüber es sich verbreitet, Schaden und Verwüstungen anrichten soll.” Forkel, Musikalisch-kritische Bibliothek, 2:293. Forkel employs a different metaphor typical of the Enlightenment in his aforementioned Sonata Theory essay to describe a similar phenomenon to that of the labyrinth: he writes that the listener is guided on a dark path with a torch. See Forkel, “Ueber eine Sonate aus Carl Phil. Emanuel Bachs dritter Sonatensammlung für Kenner und Liebhaber, in F moll,” 25. 96 principles in order to showcase the imaginative freedom of the material. In a movement with one basic theme and little in terms of motivic development, Forkel finds the harmonic digressions as the most convincing bearers of human creativity. D IS S OL UT IO N OF T HE CL A S S ICA L SYNT HE S IS Forkel and Vogler initiated and practiced a form of analysis that was short-lived. Their core beliefs—that analysis ought to elucidate the synthesis of nature and freedom in a musical work, and that the music’s form and meaning were homologous throughout a work, all regulated by the singular Hauptsatz—would be challenged in the wake of early German romantic thought just a few decades later. Critics would soon view meaning and form as torn asunder, and they were far less confident that music’s technical structure could so easily correlate to its meaning, if at all. Music’s expressive capacity, or what many critics would soon term “character,” could not be localized to a passion mixing with various subordinate passions; instead it would be the marker for the infinite capacities of the human subject, a teeming mixture of all sorts of unutterable, fleeting passions. Moreover, a powerful thought also took hold around the same moment, signaling an elegiac aesthetic modernity and analysis’s reflective turn: why do works even require such criticism in the first place? Tracing how critics and analysts developed the relationship between form and meaning will be crucial to the narrative of analysis after Forkel and Vogler. The hierarchical Hauptsatz model appeared downright rigid, and although it could not necessarily be rejected entirely, it was still repudiated in ways that evinced its insufficiency for the exhibition of human freedom. Romantic figures like Friedrich Schlegel idealized an 97 art form as a system of fragments cohering together by some elusive, spiritual force, and music critics held this notion as aspirational for a work. Yet they nonetheless recognized motivic structure and key relations as imposing an organizational structure on a work. A main motive and key still held an undeniable sway in the organization of a movement, hierarchies that seemed unlikely to be overcome. We might best view the beginnings of a romantic style of analysis as emerging from certain tendencies in the texts of Forkel and Vogler. For example, while Vogler construed the Hauptsatz as a singular entity for the regulation of the work, he also commonly split it up into contrasting sub-clauses. In other words, the work developed from not one foundational motive and passion, but two. It was a slippage from the ideal, a bifurcated conception that uncannily resonates with the subsequent Romantic tendency for fragmentation. In the case of Forkel, what seemed to motivate his discussions most of all were modulations that struck him as inventive, almost excessively so. There were passages that demanded explanation for being so daringly bold. They threatened incoherence, requiring a careful explanation of how Bach skillfully guided the listener back onto a more familiar path. In other words, it was not so much the Hauptsatz that had the explanatory power for these bold moments, but rather the passages immediately after them: the transitions were what wove the bold moments back into the singular thread of the work. An episode simply held some autonomy that the Hauptsatz could not encroach upon, gravitating, however fleetingly, toward fragmentation. These tendencies developed in the shadows behind the glittering façade of Forkel and Vogler’s analysis, but the situation would change. For the romantic analyst, discontinuities were to be privileged because they seemed to transcend the strict hierarchy 98 of the Hauptsatz model. Romantic analysis began when the critic regarded a passage as so interesting that it subverted hierarchy by standing out in sharp relief. There was simply an excess of freedom unable to be accounted for by the work’s regulative motivic or tonal content, an excess that contributed to the quasi-mystical quality of the music’s character. A moment’s mere immediate appeal signaled the inherent inadequacy of the Hauptsatz or, in a perverse twist, a moment might even reconfigure it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, romantic analysis flourished alongside the institutional entrenchment of the music journal, but it was a practice inescapably in dialogue with principles and models established decades prior. In this light, Forkel and Vogler’s attempts to elucidate the music of Winter and Bach are foundational documents for the story of analysis. 3 . A N A LY S I S AS THE PURS UIT OF S E N T I M E N TA L U N I T Y E. T. A. Hoffmann, in one of his more provocative moods, set out to give a frank account of the music of the day in an 1814 issue of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His contribution was titled simply “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” (Old and New Church Music), and it begins with a scathing condemnation of a recent trend. Composers seem to have repudiated religious music, devoting their efforts instead to works for the theater, works that have become disposable, vulgar, “lifeless puppets with a semblance of vitality.”1 For a point of contrast, Hoffmann looks to the age of Palestrina. In those wonderfully Catholic times, he argues, composers created religious works of such crystalline purity that they produced “the most glorious period in church music (and hence in music in general).”2 Hoffmann’s parenthetical remark should raise an eyebrow. We typically place him at the helm of musical romanticism, a position immortalized in his famed review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from 1810, where he effusively guides us through the intricacies of the new music of his time, celebrates its enormity, and embraces its otherworldliness.3 Hoffmann appears to pursue conflicting agendas: on one hand he grieves for a lost musical past, and on the other he champions the new. As Karol Berger 1 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 353. “Dessen Flimmer der toten Puppe den Schein des Lebens verleihen sollte.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 210. The article was originally published in Hoffmann, “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik.” For other comparisons of music to puppetry, see Pluche, “From ‘The Spectacle of Nature’ (1746),” 79–83 and Kleist, “Über das Marionettentheater,” 247–249, 251–253, 255–256, 259–261. 2 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 357. “Mit Palestrina hub unstreitig die herrlichste Periode der Kirchenmusik (und also der Musik überhaupt) an.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 214. 3 The review was originally published in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12 (1810): 630–642, 652–659. 100 has argued, Hoffmann’s championing exemplified a broader social phenomenon around 1800, nothing short of the establishment of a “musical modernity.” Critics effectively separated recent musical practices from everything before it, embracing “the exceptional, epoch-making character of late eighteenth-century musical innovations.”4 Yet all was not rosy. Exemplified by Hoffmann’s mourning of an irrecoverable past, a select group of critics articulated an elegiac strand of musical modernity. Their efforts coalesced to find “sentimental unity” in a modern music that appeared alarmingly opaque, and their quest shaped the ascendant discourse of music criticism and analysis. My narrative highlights the social and historical claims of the elegiac moderns. Earlier texts offered optimistic accounts of musical progress, such as J. N. Forkel’s introduction to his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, which presents modern music as the fruition of humanity’s historical pursuit of a fully rational language of emotion.5 To Hoffmann and some his contemporaries a few decades later, the account was less straightforward: while they recognized and extolled the advancements of music’s modern turn, they also connected these advancements to unstable societal developments. Looking to the past as a way to get a grip on the present, they were enthralled by a pre-modern music that appeared wholly transparent in its worldly purpose, particularly Palestrina’s church music. In stark contrast, modern music’s function was utterly elusive. Prefiguring G. W. F. Hegel’s aesthetic theory, critics grappled with the situation by theorizing how modern music connected to the social totality. 4 Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow, 4–5. Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, 1–68. For more on Forkel’s conception of music history, chapter 4 of Riley, Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment. 5 101 Critics considered musical style to be central to their elegiac narrative, fortifying the division between pre-modern and modern music by establishing a stylistic dichotomy: the former was gloriously simple and the latter was impressively innovative, echoing Friedrich Schiller’s “naïve” and “sentimental” art. Yet innovation risked volatility. With new music threatened by instability and incoherence at every turn, critics found analysis necessary for securing its place in the world. In their eyes the musical work was fractured, requiring new conceptualizations of form and models of structural features to stitch it back together. As a result they approached music with unprecedented fervor, and Hoffmann’s proclamation that modern music was “Sanskrit of nature, translated into sound” sums up the situation well: while undoubtedly esoteric, modern music was not outright illogical—it still held meaning.6 C O N F RO N T I N G T H E F R AC T U R E D P R E S E N T The musical discourse of modernity that developed around the turn of the nineteenth century has received much scholarly attention.7 By no means far-reaching geographically or musically, it was primarily a Germanic phenomenon whose contributors were concerned with instrumental music. Yet it resonated with a contemporaneous philosophical discourse that fashioned itself as a response to a variety of “modernizing” social developments, particularly the intellectual tradition of the Aufklärung—the 6 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 105. “In Tönen ausgesprochene Sanskrita der Natur!” Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Musikalische Schriften, 96. 7 For significant accounts, see Karol Berger, A Theory of Art and Daniel Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning. 102 discourse of the late eighteenth-century German Enlightenment—and the traumatic political events of the French Revolution.8 At the most abstract level, scholars have argued that modernity constitutes the historical moment when society appeared to have abandoned its traditional structures, when the present seemed ruptured from the past and poised for the future. Jürgen Habermas argues that its first phase originated with the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, there was a noticeable shift. To philosophers, society’s quest for grounding itself reached a moment of crisis that they saw requiring an intervention. The world appeared sharply divided into three domains: “Science, morality, and art were . . . institutionally differentiated as realms of activity in which questions of truth, justice, and of taste were autonomously elaborated.” The hallowed unity of truth, goodness, and beauty of antiquity had splintered, and furthermore these “spheres of knowing” were separated from an ever-increasing rift between secular and religious life.9 The establishment of rational foundations led paradoxically to a radical fracturing, fueling what Habermas terms “the philosophical discourse of modernity.” To the German idealists and the early German romantics, Hoffmann among them, contemporary life was fraught. Modernity produced subjects who were alienated from the world and each other, exemplifying the broken conditions of the present by living fractured lives.10 According to Frederick Beiser, the romantics were responding to the internal conflicts of the Aufklärung, embracing the Enlightenment concept of Bildung as a 8 For more on the Aufklärung, see Schmidt, “Introduction: What Is Enlightenment? A Question, Its Context, and Some Consequences.” A classic political account of the period is in Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848. 9 Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 16–19. 10 Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism, 30–35. 103 way to advance society while attempting to address the potentially alienating tendency of reason and radical criticism, particularly in the wake of Immanuel Kant’s philosophical Copernican turn.11 They ultimately put their faith in art, which “could restore belief and unity with nature and society.”12 The possibility of restoration implied an earlier unification between subject and society as well as self and nature, an ideal many attributed to Ancient Greece. Above all philosophers and critics posited a harmonious antiquity as a way to interpret modern conditions, and it proved to be a potent hermeneutic. The maneuver began with the art historian J. J. Winckelmann, who revived interest in Ancient Greek art with is 1764 magnum opus, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of the Art of Antiquity). For Winckelmann, the modern critic could only approach the seeming perfection of ancient art from a distance: I could not keep myself from gazing after the fate of works of art as far as my eye could see. Just as a beloved stands on the seashore and follows with tearful eyes her departing sweetheart, with no hope of seeing him again, and believes she can glimpse even in the distant sail the image of her love—so we, like the lover, have as it were only a shadowy outline of the subject of our desires remaining.13 Schiller appropriated Winckelmann’s mournful interpretive procedure in his 1795 “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen” (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man). He asserts that the Ancient Greek citizen was at once both an individual and an embodiment of the state, while the modern citizen was alienated from the world as a consequence of society’s efficient division of labor.14 Enlightenment values 11 For an account of Kant’s immediate philosophical influence, see Förster, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy. 12 Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism, 53. 13 Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, 351. 14 Schiller, “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” 100. 104 had led humanity astray and atomized the world into “innumerable but lifeless parts.” To Schiller society was no longer a living organism but a mechanical clock. He claims, “Utility is the great idol of our age, to which all powers are in thrall and to which all talent must pay homage.”15 Art’s place in the modern world was less than obvious. According to J. M. Bernstein, art suffered the most from modernity’s repudiation of tradition, a condition he terms “aesthetic alienation.” In the aftermath of society’s fracturing, art had lost its former authority in the world and was expelled from the spheres of everyday life, religion, knowledge, and morality.16 Decades after Schiller, Hegel would embed the impoverishment of modern art into the very center of his aesthetic theory, particularly in his shift from what he terms “Classical” to “Romantic” art.17 Breaking away from neoclassical aesthetics, Hegel claims that art embodies and reinforces socially meaningful forms of life. Art does not depend on timeless standards—it is a historically and socially contingent vehicle for articulating how society relates human agency to the natural world. According to Gillian Rose, Hegel’s conception of art is a “historically specific phenomenon which reproduces social contradiction in the medium of sensuous illusion.” She claims: “Art in this sense is not ideal, not integral, not beautiful.”18 In other words, art is not an abstraction for its own ends, but rather an expression of the character of the spheres of social life. Artistic 15 Ibid., 89. Original italics. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno, 1–10. 17 Claiming modern art’s obsolescence is a tradition almost as old as continental philosophy itself. See Geulen, The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel. 18 Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology, 135. For an account of Hegel’s aesthetic theory, see Pinkard, “Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art.” My discussion is also indebted to chapter 1 of Pippin, After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism. 16 105 form is harmonious when created in a climate of political harmony, or unstable in one of political instability. For Hegel there was no better art than the art of Ancient Greece. It had served as a perfect material realization of freedom: “Therefore the world-view of the Greeks is precisely the milieu in which beauty begins its true life and builds its serene kingdom; the milieu of free vitality which is not only there naturally and immediately but is generated by spiritual vision and transfigured by art.”19 In contrast, Romantic art, that is, modern art in the post-Reformation Christian world, cannot serve the function as well. Hegel sees this as a direct consequence of the modern invention of individual subjectivity. To him, humanity outgrows the need for art or beauty as it functioned in antiquity, as the quest for its selfunderstanding no longer requires a material means for the job. Hegel famously states: “The peculiar nature of artistic production and of works of art no longer fills our highest need. We have got beyond venerating works of art as divine and worshipping them.” These comments lead to his famous claim that “art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past.”20 Art’s obsolescence comes with religion’s loss of power, both superseded in modern life by philosophy.21 The art of the day could no longer function as perfectly as it did in Ancient Greece—it was a relic. 19 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 1:437. According to Pinkard, “The elegiac nostalgia for Greek life—beautiful, lost and irrecoverable—was a weighty feature of the intellectual atmosphere of Hegel's time.” Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, 134. 20 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 1:10–11. 21 As Pinkard states, “The inadequacy of art to capture this self-understanding for us is, paradoxically, not the metaphysical inadequacy of art itself to get at a deeper truth, but a change in the status of ‘we moderns’ who find it inadequate to ourselves as we have come to be.” Pinkard, “Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art,” 21. 106 M O D E R N A R T ’ S A N A LY T I C A L I M P E R A T I V E While modern art had lost its “highest vocation,” it did not go away quietly. Hegel’s account offers intriguing, if enigmatic new directions for modern art. He contends, “In this way romantic art is the self-transcendence of art within its own sphere and in the form of art itself.”22 Central to art’s new status was a new mode of engagement. Modern art simply could not offer a compelling sensory experience as it could in the Classical age; instead it required some sort of discursive mediation: What is now aroused in us by works of art is not just immediate enjoyment but our judgement also, since we subject to our intellectual consideration (i) the content of art, and (ii) the work of art’s means of presentation, and the appropriateness or inappropriateness of both to one another. The philosophy of art is therefore a greater need in our day than it was in days when art by itself as art yielded full satisfaction. Art invites us to intellectual consideration, and that not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing philosophically what art is.23 Essential to art’s modern character was an invitation to judgment: to consider its form and content, to evaluate its very credibility as art. In short, art now needed criticism. Earlier figures had found modern art complex and unstable, fundamentally different from the gloriously simple art of antiquity. As Winckelmann asserted: “Had the ancients been poorer, they would have written better about art: compared to them, we are like badly portioned heirs; but we turn over every stone, and by drawing inferences from many tiny details, we at least arrive at a probable assertion that can be more instructive than the accounts left by the ancients.”24 Schiller’s account from his 1795–6 “Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung” (On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry) provides a helpful model for illustrating the shift. In Schiller’s Ancient Greece, the subject and society were 22 Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 1:80. Ibid., 1:11. Original italics. 24 Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, 351. 23 107 harmoniously united, with no sensed division. The naïve artist was nature, associating intuitively with the world, and could only depict an object from a limited perspective. Regardless of genre or the intensity of affect, the relation of the depiction to its imitated object remained constant. Naïve art required no intermediary to secure its meaning—it simply mattered. In a sentimental world, on the other hand, art was hardly as fortunate. The sentimental artist could only seek nature in his fractured modern life. This sentimental longing for the naïve world drove the artist to compare his actual situation to the ideal one, and the resulting dissonance led to a variety of sentimental art forms.25 Thus when the sentimental artist appropriated the classical forms of old, he could no longer use the traditional norms they relied upon. Hegel deepens the claim that the modern artist was no longer connected to tradition, revealing that the relation between outer material and inner freedom was no longer straightforward: “The artist thus stands above specific consecrated forms and configurations and moves freely on his own account, independent of the subject-matter and mode of conception in which the holy and eternal was previously made visible to human apprehension.”26 While classical art forms had reflected and supported the harmonious relations of the world and seamlessly blended into life, modern ones retreated into themselves as unique totalities. Schiller expands on this claim in a set of letters to Gottfried Körner, a notable attempt to work through his conception of aesthetics, influenced by K. P. Moritz’s 1788 Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen (On the Artistic Imitation of the 25 Schiller, “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry,” 204. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 1:605. For a trenchant analysis, see Pippin, After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism, 42–43. 26 108 Beautiful) and Kant’s third Critique. According to Beiser, the basis of Schiller’s project was to stress human freedom in the aesthetic realm, and it is in the Kallias-briefe where his conception of their relation most closely matches Kant’s.27 Modern art could no longer depend on societal custom, and so its materials appeared free: “A form appears as free as soon as we are neither able nor inclined to search for its ground outside it . . . A form is beautiful, one might say, if it demands no explanation, or if it explains itself without a concept.”28 All of a work’s components seemed self-determining, “as if technique flowed freely out of the thing itself.” The components also had to stand apart from each other. Schiller writes, “Freedom comes about because each restricts its inner freedom such as to allow every other to express its freedom.”29 No longer a harmonious assemblage of features readily submitting themselves to a unified whole, the work of art was now an atomized totality. Friedrich Schlegel’s call for “Romantic poetry” radicalizes just how much freedom the arrangement of artistic materials should display. The criteria for binding materials within a work of art lose their traditional basis, requiring the work itself to combine disparate elements in a convincingly original way. Schlegel claims: “[Romantic poetry] tries to and should mix and fuse poetry and prose, inspiration and criticism, the poetry of art and the poetry of nature; and make poetry lively and sociable, and life and society poetical; poeticize wit and fill and saturate the forms of art with every kind of good, solid matter for instruction, and animate them with the pulsations of humour.”30 As Hegel later 27 Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher, 219–24. See also Henrich, “Beauty and Freedom: Schiller’s Struggle with Kant’s Aesthetics.” 28 Schiller, “Kallias or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Gottfried Körner,” 155. Original italics. 29 Ibid., 171–72. Original italics. 30 Schlegel, “Athenaeum Fragments,” 293. 109 claims, the modern artist had no more rules to follow, faced no forbidden juxtapositions of styles or genres and was free to assemble any features imaginable. The work became a unique system of intermingling parts bound only by his imagination. Unity no longer referred to a pleasingly formed whole with all parts harmoniously supporting a manifest aesthetic depiction. To borrow Schiller’s term, it was now sentimental unity, a singular totality containing a succession of fragments. Each work demanded its own principles for understanding; the work itself, rather than traditional artistic norms, authorized its unification. Critics were drawn to the work to affirm its wholeness, embracing two opposing claims: the components of the work appeared selfdetermining, but they were nonetheless arranged in a way that cohered to a singular whole. Schlegel referred to this coherence as “a higher unity . . . through the bond of ideas, through a spiritual central point.”31 The critical pursuit of this “bond of ideas” was a procedure that memorialized modern art’s loss of naïve unity. Schlegel attempted, in Winckelmann’s words, to “turn over every stone” in his lengthy analytical essay on J. W. von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. He contends, “This book is absolutely new and unique. We can learn to understand it only on its own terms. To judge it according to an idea of genre drawn from custom and belief . . . is as if a child tried to clutch the stars and the moon in his hand and pack them in his satchel.”32 There were no pre-existing models to determine the inner logic of Goethe’s novel. Instead, Schlegel carefully pores over the novel section by section, considering how each one relates to its surroundings and how the transitions between sections help to connect them. Central 31 Schlegel, “Letter About the Novel,” 293. See also Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 177. 32 Schlegel, “On Goethe’s Meister,” 275. 110 to his analysis is how each part maintains independence from the whole: each fragment was part of the totality, yet each could also stand alone, exhibiting “unintentional homogeneity and original unity.”33 Following Schiller’s model, the sections of Goethe’s novel demanded independence from each other. A fragment’s independence threatened to dissolve the glue cohering it to the surroundings of the work, yet somehow all of the fragments coalesced together into a sentimental unity. Resonating with Hegel’s conception of modern art, Schlegel’s conception of the novel contained a claim about art’s new status. A work held a claim to its coherence originating from within it and hovering over it, a claim attained through criticism. NAÏVE MUSIC At the turn of the nineteenth century some critics recognized music’s unstable position in the wake of aesthetic modernity, a recognition that reached its apotheosis in Hoffmann’s “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik.”34 The essay starts off with a contentious observation: operatic music in the last decades of the eighteenth century was lacking any sort of deeper connection to society beyond commercial worth. Instead of dutifully studying counterpoint for the purpose of creating religious music, composers now ditched the church for the theater: “Their only concern is to dazzle and impress the multitude, or indeed for ignoble monetary gain to pander to passing taste and become merely popular composers instead of 33 Ibid., 276–77. Others have observed themes of modern aesthetic alienation in Hoffmann’s literary works. See Schönherr, “Social Differentiation and Romantic Art: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ‘The Sanctus’ and the Problem of Aesthetic Positioning in Modernity.” 34 111 serious ones.”35 Composers were increasingly preoccupied with entertaining the masses and beholden to the commodified marketplace, rendering modern music fundamentally hollow.36 While he was far from being the first to claim that composers had succumbed to popular taste, Hoffmann provides an intriguing explanation for his observation.37 Instead of faulting composers for misjudgment, he contends that the situation was part of a larger social crisis: “The deeper cause of this frivolity in art lay in the general tendency of the times. As though governed by demonic forces, everything conspired to hold men spellbound within their miserable, blinkered world, whose constant activity seemed to them the highest purpose of existence. And so they turned against all that was noble, true and sacred.”38 In the modern world the subject was alienated, distracted from pursuing a higher way of life, inhibited from composing a noble music. Music of the church was not 35 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 353. “Daß es ihnen nur darum zu tun sei, zu glänzen, der Menge zu imponieren, oder wohl gar, des schnöden Geldgewinstes wegen, dem augenblicklichen Zeitgeschmack zu frönen, und, statt ein gründlicher, tiefer, nur ein beliebter Komponist zu werden.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 209–10. 36 Hoffmann’s conception of modern opera merits further study. His own compositional focus on operatic works and his laudatory review of Spontini’s Olimpia suggests a deeper claim to the legitimacy of opera as a Romantic art form. See Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 431–46. For context on Hoffmann’s operas, see chapter 5 of Chantler, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Aesthetics. 37 Hoffmann was treading a well-worn path when he claimed modern church music’s inadequacy. For instance, in 1801 Triest stated, “In a word, sacred music is no longer a thing that exists in its own right.” Triest, “Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,” 359. Decades earlier J. F. Reichardt and J. A. Hiller offered critiques of modern church music. See Ottenberg, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 110–11. At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Hamburg-based Johann Mattheson fashioned his critical project as a response to his perceived obsolescence of the Lutheran cantorial tradition. See chapter 1. 38 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 353–54. “Die tiefere Ursache dieses Leichtsinns in der Kunst lag in der Tendenz der Zeit überhaupt. Als regierten dämonische Prinzipe, strebte alles dahin, den Menschen festzubannen in das befangene, ärmliche Leben, dessen Tun und Treiben er für den höchsten Zweck des Daseins hielt: so wurde er abtrünnig allem Höheren, Wahrhaften, Heiligen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 210. 112 even immune, as the Enlightenment “killed every deeper religious impulse.”39 Composers could no longer create an authentic church music because society no longer supported authentic religious worship. Modern church music, with all its faults, was just a manifestation of modernity itself.40 Hoffmann articulated an elegiac modernity when he constructed a musical analogy for Hegel and Schiller’s Ancient Greece, a moment when musical practices likewise appeared to be in harmony with society. Resonating with the early German romantic nostalgia for Catholic Europe, Hoffmann chose Renaissance Rome as an instructive foil to modern life.41 Here music was grounded by pre-Enlightened religion which, in Hoffmann’s eyes, made church music truly and clearly meaningful: “For the practicing composer . . . the most sacred depths of his noble and truly Christian art are first revealed in Italy when Christianity shone forth in its greatest splendour, and the great composers, with the solemnity of divine rapture, proclaimed the holiest mysteries of religion in magnificent sounds not heard before.”42 In Ludwig Tieck’s 1812 Phantasus, the character Ernst 39 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 370. “Allen tieferen religiösen Sinn tötenden Aufklärerei gleichen Schritt haltend.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 227. For more on Hoffmann’s religious views, see Chapin, “Lost in Quotation: The Nuances behind E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Programmatic Statements,” 49–52. 40 Hoffmann invokes France as exemplifying this decay which, as Stephen Rumph points out, resonates with political events of the time. Rumph, “A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism,” 55–58. 41 A paradigmatic idealization of medieval Europe is in Novalis, “Christendom or Europe.” 42 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 356. “Dem ausübenden, praktischen Komponisten geht aber die heiligste Tiefe seiner herrlichen, echt-christlichen Kunst erst da auf, als in Italien das Christentum in seiner höchsten Glorie strahlte, und die hohen Meister in der Weihe göttlicher Begeisterung das heiligste Geheimnis der Religion in herrlichen, nie gehörten Tönen verkündeten.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 213. Tieck rhapsodized about Palestrina’s age in Tieck, Phantasus: eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielen und Novellen, 1:466–68. 113 recognizes the authority of Renaissance-era church music when he reminisces about attending spellbinding performances in Rome: The music heard on Christmas at [the Papal Basilica of Santa] Maria Maggiore and throughout Holy Week in the Vatican, even many times at the Papal Palace of Monte Cavallo, was just as unique as Michelangelo’s Last Judgment or Raphael’s Rooms. This pleasure could only be experienced in the singular Rome, and as this world capital was the epicenter of painting and sculpture, so too was it the true and preeminent school of music.43 Music worked jointly with other arts, such as painting and sculpture, to advance the spiritual mission of Christianity at its hub, the Vatican. Resonating with Hegel’s conception of Classical art, music served as a vehicle to actualize the harmony between the human and divine. Echoing Tieck’s Ernst, Hoffmann claims: The love, the consonance of all things spiritual in nature promised to the Christian, finds expression in the chord first brought to life in Christianity. And so the chord, the harmony, becomes the image and expression of that community of spirits, of that unification with the eternal, the ideal, reigning over us and yet embracing us.44 Music’s efficacy in the world was beyond question; it was something, as Ernst states, “to compose to the movement of the stars.”45 Palestrina served as the paradigmatic composer of the age. Hoffmann contends that his music had a wonderfully uncomplicated character, with “bold, powerful chords, 43 “Die Musik, die man Weihnachten in Maria Maggiore und in der Charwoche im Vatikan hörte, vielmals auch im päpstlichen Pallast auf Monte Cavallo, war eben so einzig, als es das jüngste Gericht von Michael Angelo, oder die Stanzen Rafaels find; man konnte diesen Genuß auch nur in dem einzigen Rom haben, und wie diese Hauptstadt der Welt, der Mittelpunkt der Mahlerei und Skulptur war, so war sie auch die wahre hohe Schule der Musik.” Tieck, Phantasus: eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielen und Novellen, 1:466–67. 44 “Die Liebe, der Einklang alles Geistigen in der Natur, wie er dem Christen verheißen, spricht sich aus im Akkord, der daher auch erst im Christentum zum Leben erwachte; und so wird der Akkord, die Harmonie, Bild und Ausdruck der Geistergemeinschaft, der Vereinigung mit dem Ewigen, dem Idealen, das über uns thront und doch uns einschließt.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 215. 45 “Welche sinnige Alte dem Umschwung der Gestirne ebenfalls zuschreiben wollten.” Tieck, Phantasus: eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielen und Novellen, 1:471. 114 blazing forth like blinding shafts of light.” The music was “simple, true, childlike, good, strong, and sturdy.” It was also free from recent technical developments: “No contrived frivolity or orchestral mimicry defiles the purity of this heaven-sent music; nothing is heard of the so-called striking modulations, the gaudy figures, the feeble melodies, the impotent, confusing clamour of instruments.”46 In short, Palestrina’s music was naïve.47 Other critics also imagined an idyllic musical past, and whether it was in Palestrina’s Rome or elsewhere, it always harbored an unadulterated style that privileged simplicity of expression. Amadeus Wendt tellingly refers to his version of a lost age as the “Kingdom of Consonance,” a world of old folk and church music whose name refers both to music’s clear societal role and to its uncontrived stylistic components.48 C. F. Michaelis explicitly labels such music “naïve” in his 1805 article, “Etwas über sentimentale und naive Musik” (On Sentimental and Naïve Music). Like Hoffmann’s characterization of Palestrina’s style, Michaelis’s naïve music opposed the features of modern music: Naïve music expresses, with the greatest simplicity and calmness, the gentle sentiments of a mind in harmony with itself, of a heart content with itself, free from the restlessness of intense affects and passions. Gently flowing is its melody, its harmony artless, simple and natural in its chords and inflections; its motion even and mild; its modulations are without bold leaps or striking digressions. The 46 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 358–60. “Wie blendende Strahlen hereinbrechenden Akkorde, auf das Gemüt zu wirken vermöge. — Palestrina ist einfach, wahrhaft, kindlich, fromm, stark und mächtig”; “Keine gesuchte Spielerei und Nachäffung entweiht das rein vom Himmel Empfangene; daher kommt nichts vor von den sogennanten frappierenden Modulationen, von den bunten Figuren, von den weichlichen Melodien, von dem kraftlosen, verwirrenden Geräusch der Instrumente.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 216–18. 47 Hoffman’s conception of Palestrina’s style elaborates themes presented by earlier critics, such as J. F. Reichardt, and his insights were mediated by the limited availability of Palestrina’s works at the time. See Garratt, Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination, 43. 48 Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:197. Wendt, “Gedanken über die neuere Tonkunst, und van Beethovens Musik, namentlich dessen Fidelio,” 682–83. Wendt discusses old music earlier on in Wendt, “Von dem Einfluss der Musik auf den Charakter.” For more on the period conceptions of folk music, see Gelbart, The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner. 115 nuances of its expression are gentle, and the expression is free of strong contrasts. All that makes music piquant and humorous—such as through strange harmonic modulations, shocking dissonances, through striking intensifications, rhythmic deceptions, and the like—is distant from this genre.49 In the naïve style, according to thinkers like Michaelis, the imagination stood beneath understanding and it was primarily linked with vocal works, especially “chorales, choruses, fugues, and spiritual music generally.”50 A work held a naïve unity: each feature completely subsumed itself under the whole without any jagged edges. As a reflection of the harmonious world, the music of antiquity served to complement and reinforce traditional societal structures. S E N T I M E N TA L M U S I C Critics invented naïve music in order to grasp modern sentimental music. The two were linked: if naïve music had reflected its idyllic surroundings with simplicity and stability, then modern music epitomized the fractured present with complexity and volatility. Initially, eighteenth-century critics such as J. A. Scheibe saw early versions of the modern 49 “Die naive Musik drückt in der größten Einfalt und Ruhe die sanften Gefühle des mit sich selbst harmonirenden Gemüths, des von der Unruhe der heftigen Affekten und Leidenschaften freien, in sich selbst zufriedenen Herzens aus. Leicht fließend ist ihre Melodie, kunstlos, einfach und natürlich in den Akkorden und Wendungen ihre Harmonie; ihre Bewegung gleichmäßig und mild; ihre Modulation ohne kühne Sprünge und auffallende Abwechslungen. Die Nüancen ihres Ausdrucks sind sanft, und er ist frei von starken Contrasten. Alles was die Musik pikant und humoristisch macht, z. B. durch fremde harmonische Ausweichungen, erschütternde Dissonanzen, durch frappante Verstärkungen, rhythmische Illusionen u. dergl. ist fern von dieser Gattung.” Michaelis, Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften, 240. The article was originally published in Michaelis, “Etwas über sentimentale und naive Musik.” 50 “Überhaupt zeugt und liebt dieser alterthümliche Styl mehr Vokal- als Instrumental-Musik. Die Werke, die für ihn sprechen, sind vorzüglich Choräle, Chöre, Fugen und überhaupt geistliche Musik.” Michaelis, Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften, 284. Wendt also describes old music as having “the appearance of following a predetermined plan.” To him Haydn was a transitional figure, displaying both pre-modern and modern compositional tendencies. Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:197. 116 style as a potentially jumbled mixture of incompatible techniques and conflicting styles (see chapter 1). Composers risked mixing styles defined by social stratum, national idiom, or generic convention that potentially resulted in incoherence. By contrast the critics of the elegiac strand of musical modernity found such a style ineluctably tied to the present, foreshadowing Hegel’s claim that the modern artist was no longer bound to any tradition. The modern style was the grotesque negation of pre-modern clarity and balance, overflowing with bizarre modulations, clashing dissonances, wobbly syncopations, and exaggerated dynamic juxtapositions. The style even prompted a new conceptualization of musical form, as the materials of the work appeared fractured, no longer readily fusing into a whole.51 Instrumental music exemplified the modern style’s volatile tendencies. While scholars have often characterized the rise of instrumental music as an achievement, such as when Carl Dahlhaus calls the symphony the culmination of absolute music in the earlynineteenth century, the musical moderns were less emphatic.52 Their writings betray an ambivalence, tempering instrumental music’s impressive artifice with its destabilizing capacities.53 After his discussion of the harmonious musical age of Renaissance Rome, Tieck’s Ernst laments: “This glory is now shattered, and one can only recount it as if it were an old, marvelous legend.” Modern opera had contaminated musical practice and enfeebled its spiritual content. Utilizing the image of a stream of water as a metaphor for 51 The elegiac moderns held a view that the musical era of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven was intrinsically experimental, a position explored by Webster, “Between Enlightenment and Romanticism in Music History: ‘First Viennese Modernism’ and the Delayed Nineteenth Century.” 52 Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, 10–11. 53 Here I follow the argument in Littlejohns, “Iniquitous Innocence: The Ambiguity of Music in the Phantasien über die Kunst (1799).” 117 musical practice, Ernst continues: “The current, which was channeled into the secular luxury of our opera by offsetting it with wrath, vengeance, and all sorts of passions, has become muddy and corrupt.” Contemporary musical practice had in effect transformed into “a weak imitator of speech and poetry.”54 Ernst follows these bold claims with an evocative passage, comparing modern music to the Orpheus myth and equating the horrific Orphean failure to resurrect the dead with the music of Mozart: [In Mozart’s music] I see the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. She is dead—the beloved abides among the shades in the dark underworld. He feels enough strength and courage to abandon sunlight, to confide himself to the black flood and twilight. His enchanting playing stirs the serious, otherwise merciless god, and the ghosts and damned enjoy a quickly fleeting bliss in his music. Eurydice follows his string playing, but he is forbidden from glancing backward and looking into her face; she can only be held on faith. She entices, she shouts, she cries, then his eyes turn toward her, and the beloved’s form trembles fainter and fainter back into the cavernous underworld. The singer, with the force of his music, returns to the world of the living. His tune sings and laments who he has lost. All the melodies seek her, but, from the deep abyss that no singer had visited before him, he brought the desolate rolling of the underground waters, the groaning of the martyred, the wailing of the fearful, and the mocking laughter of the furies, along with all the horrors of the dark realm, and everything sounds within the frequently convoluted art in the charm of his songs. Heaven and hell, which were separated by vast chasms, are magically and frightfully combined in the art that originally was pure light, tranquil love, and glorifying prayer. This is how Mozart’s music appears to me.55 54 “Diese Herrlichkeit ist nun auch zertrümmert, und man kann davon nur wie von einer alten wunderbaren Sage erzählen. . . . Seitdem glaube ich eingesehen zu haben, daß nur dieses die wahre Musik sey, und daß der Strom, den man in den weltlichen Luxus unserer Oper hinein geleitet hat, um ihn mit Zorn, Rache und allen Leidenschaften zu versetzen, trübe und unlauter geworden ist”; “eine schwache Nachahmerin der Rede und Poesie.” Tieck, Phantasus: eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielen und Novellen, 1:467–68. 55 “Ich sehe hierinn die Geschichte des Orpheus und der Eurydice. Sie ist gestorben; bei den Schatten, in der dunkeln Unterwelt weilt die Geliebte; er fühlt Kraft und Muth genug, das Licht der Sonne zu verlassen, sich der schwarzen Flut und Dämmerung anzuvertrauen; sein Zauberspiel rührt den ernsten, sonst unerbittlichen Gott; die Larven und Verdammten genießen in seinen Tönen eine schnell vorüber fliehenden Seeligkeit; Eurydice folgt seinem Saitenspiel, aber nicht rückwärts soll er blicken, ihr nicht ins Angesicht schauen, sie nur im Glauben besitzen; sie lockt, sie ruft, sie weint, da wendet sich sein Auge, und blasser und blasser zittert die geliebte Gestalt in den gähnenden Orkus zurück. Der Sänger tritt mit der Kraft seiner Töne wieder in die Oberwelt, sein Lied singt und klagt die Verlorene, alle Melodien suchen sie, aber er hat aus dem tiefen Abgrund, den kein Sänger vor ihm besucht, das schwermüthige Rollen der unterirdischen Wässer, das Aechzen der Gemarterten, 118 Like sorcery gone awry, modern music was a perversion of traditional order, a volatile juxtaposition of opposing images, a sounding art form rooted in catastrophic loss. Novalis mirrors Ernst’s pessimism by summing up the hollowness of modern European culture, in the wake of its secularization and enlightenment, with the chilling epigram: “Where there are no gods, ghosts reign.”56 Tieck’s dismal portrayal of musical modernity was hardly exceptional, as critics and early German romantics often noted the perverseness of music’s dizzying new style.57 W. H. Wackenroder describes the experience of listening to a modern symphony as initially delightful, suddenly transforming into something utterly horrifying: With easy, playful joy the resounding soul rises forth from its oracular cave . . . But soon the images around it acquire firmer contours; it tests its power with stronger emotion; it suddenly dares to plunge itself into the foaming floodwaters, moves lithely through all heights and depths, and rolls up and down all emotions with spirited delight. — But alas! It recklessly invades wilder labyrinths; with boldly forced impudence it seeks out the horrors of dejection, the torments of pain, in order to quench the thirst of its vitality; and with one burst of the trumpet, all frightful horrors of the world, all the armies of disaster violently break in from all sides like a cloudburst and roll over each other in distorted forms, frightfully, gruesomely, like a mountain come alive.58 das Stöhnen der Geängstigten und das Hohnlachen der Furien, samt allen Gräueln der dunkeln Reiche mit herauf gebracht, und alles klingt in vielfach verschlungener Kunst in der Lieblichkeit seiner Lieder. Himmel und Hölle, die durch unermeßliche Klüfte getrennt waren, sind zauberhaft und zum Erschrecken in der Kunst vereinigt, die ursprünglich reines Licht, stille Liebe und lobpreisende Andacht war. So erscheint mir Mozarts Musik.” Ibid., 1:468–69. Over a century later, Theodor Adorno concedes Tieck’s bleak conclusion about early nineteenth-century music with the same mythical reference: “Beethoven—his language, his substance and tonality in general, that is, the whole system of bourgeois music—is irrecoverably lost to us, and is perceived only as something vanishing from sight. As Eurydice was seen. Everything must be understood from that viewpoint.” Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, 6. Original italics. 56 Novalis, “Christendom or Europe,” 139. 57 For example, see Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning, 71–72. 58 Adapted from Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies, 193. “Mit leichter, spielender Freude steigt die tönende Seele aus ihrer Orakelhöhle hervor . . . Aber bald gewinnen die Bilder um sie her festern Bestand, sie versucht ihre Kraft an stärkeres Gefühl, sie wagt sich plötzlich mitten in die schäumenden Fluthen zu stürzen, schmiegt sich durch alle Höhen und Tiefen, und rollt alle Gefühle mit muthigem Entzücken hinauf und hinab. — Doch wehe! sie dringt verwegen in wildere 119 Jean Paul even claims that Haydn’s “annihilating humor,” brought upon by the abrupt juxtaposition of key centers, dynamics, and tempos in his symphonies, results in a disturbing “psychic vertigo which suddenly transforms our own rapid motion into an external one affecting the whole steady world.”59 Though John Neubauer celebrates the turn of the nineteenth century as the moment of instrumental music’s “emancipation” from traditional mimetic aesthetics, the contributors to the elegiac strand of musical modernity recognized that this freedom came at a high cost.60 Music’s artifice evinced its modern estrangement from traditional social structures, and the virtuosic advancement of its own materials supplanted a simple style that was no longer sustainable. Returning to Hoffmann, while “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” initially seems to condemn modern church music, squaring with Hoffmann’s reputation for privileging instrumental music, the essay exposes a space for both genres in light of their modern complexities. Hoffmann uncovers a purpose for new church music when he discusses its deficiencies. In stark contrast to Palestrina’s music, which had lucidly reinforced the harmonious social totality, modern church music exacerbated the discontinuities of modern life. Its chromatic figures were “glued-on pieces of rustling tinsel” that “mar the calm composure of the whole, smother the singing and, particularly in the high vault of a Labyrinthe, sie sucht mit kühn-erzwungener Frechheit die Schrecken des Trübsinns, die bittern Quaalen des Schmerzes auf, um den Durst ihrer Lebenskraft zu sättigen, und mit einem Trompetenstoße brechen alle furchtbaren Schrecken der Welt, alle die Kriegsschaaren des Unglücks von allen Seiten mächtig wie ein Wolkenbruch herein, und wälzen sich in verzerrten Gestalten fürchterlich, schauerlich wie ein lebendig gewordenes Gebirge über einander.” Tieck and Wackenroder, Phantasien über die Kunst, für Freunde der Kunst, 200–201. 59 Richter, Horn of Oberon: Jean Paul Richter’s School for Aesthetics, 93–94. “Des vernichtenden Humors”; “Gleichsam ein Seelen-Schwindel welcher unsere schnelle Bewegung plötzlich in die fremde der ganzen stehenden Welt umwandelt.” Jean Paul Richter, Vorschule der Aesthetik, 1:152. 60 Neubauer, The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in EighteenthCentury Aesthetics. 120 cathedral, only produce a confusing noise.”61 Hoffmann takes Haydn’s church music to be an exemplar of the genre’s corrupted manner, as it incorporates mercurial shifts of affect that contaminated the church with images of the profane: “This wonderful music is charged with the same constant alternation of gravity, awe, horror, jollity, and exuberance as that which mundane activity gives rise to, and it relates to the church only to the extent that pious reflections play a part in the affairs of everyday life.” Church works are infected with “the contagion of mundane, ostentatious levity” and, at worst, “sound like dogs snapping beneath their master’s table.”62 New church music was noisy: it undermined the church’s metaphysical stature by reducing it to the realm of everyday life, laying bare the weakened state of enlightened religion. Hoffmann’s turn to instrumental music toward the end of the essay demonstrates modern music’s dialectical nature. Just as modern religious music contaminated the sacred with the profane, modern instrumental music achieved the reverse by disrupting the quotidian realm with spirit. To be sure, Hoffmann rehearses a romantic truism when he claims that music harbored spiritual content: “By virtue of its essential character, therefore, music is a form of religious worship.”63 Yet within an elegiac musical modernity, this claim 61 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 373. “Die wie aufgeklebte, knisternde Goldflitter die Ruhe und Haltung des Ganzen stören, die den Gesang übertäuben, und vorzüglich in dem hohen, gewölbten Dom nur ein verwirrendes Geräusch machen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 232. 62 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 370–71. “Derselbe ewige Wechsel des Ernsten, Grauenhaften, Schrecklichen, Lustigen, Ausgelassenen, wie das irdische Sein ihn treibt, herrscht in jener wunderwollen Musik, die auf die Kirche sich höchstens nur insofern bezieht, als auch fromme Betrachtungen in den Kreis des täglichen Lebens gezogen werden”; “Ansteckenden Seuche des weltlichen, prunkenden Leichtsinns”; “Wie jene sich unter dem Tisch des Herrn beißenden Hunde erscheinen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 227–28. 63 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 355. “Ihrem innern, eigentümlichen Wesen nach, ist daher die Musik, wie eben erst gesagt wurde, religiöser Kultus.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 212. Here Wackenroder is the paradigmatic precursor to Hoffmann. He contends modern music has become a better conduit to the spiritual realm than religion, as it has the power 121 highlights the perversion of music’s split from the religion of antiquity. It was a testament to the unstable fracturing of modernity that music now offered a religious experience by itself, apart from the church. Hoffmann’s underlying contention is that Beethoven’s music corrupts the bourgeois venue, whether a concert hall or salon, by engulfing the listener in spiritual ecstasy. Above all it was subversive: a spiritual experience in the secular realm exposed the inadequacy of civic life divorced from religion. Hoffmann sums up the situation with the claim that “Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven have evolved a new art.” Here he prefigures Hegel’s realization that the Romantic art of modernity was functionally different from the Classical art of Ancient Greece, particularly in light of his discussion of Palestrina. Following Dahlhaus, Berger flattens this distinction: “But [for Hoffmann] Beethoven’s symphony appears already to be the Palestrina mass for the times when Christianity no longer shines forth in all its glory, the new revelation of ‘the other world,’ the realm of the spirit.”64 While Berger renders music to be the same spirit-revealing form from Palestrina to Beethoven, Hoffmann argues something else. Mirroring Hegel’s narrative of Classical giving way to Romantic art forms, he claims that Palestrina’s music was a vehicle to actualize the pre-modern bond between spirit and nature. New music, whether it be in the church or the concert hall, revealed that to “storm the fortress of heaven” and “come closest to the throne of God.” He writes: “In the realm of art, I . . . willingly deliver myself and my entire being unto its governing Fate. I release myself from all bonds, sail with streaming pennants on the open sea of emotion, and willingly disembark wherever the heavenly breeze from above happens to carry me.” Wackenroder, Confessions and Fantasies, 182. 64 Berger, A Theory of Art, 137. Dahlhaus similarly argues that the metaphysical essence of music had fleeted religious works and then opera, only to empower the symphony in Beethoven’s time. See Dahlhaus, Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik, 111–21. The interpretation returns in Garratt, Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination, 54–55. 122 the bond was broken. It was an infestation of otherworldly content in the, to use Hegel’s word, “prosaic” modern world. “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” constitutes an elegiac reflection of musical modernity, claiming that modern music in all its genres called attention to the fault lines of modern society. Five years later in his Die Serapions-Brüder and paralleling the style of Tieck’s Phantasus, Hoffmann recast the essay as a dialogue, primarily between the two characters Theodore and Cyprian.65 The former attempts to salvage contemporary music while the latter mourns the bygone age of Palestrina, highlighting the countervailing forces of the original essay and the grounding ambivalence of the elegiac musical discourse of modernity. Music stood at a crossroads, looking back to a harmonious past and forward to an uncertain future. Hoffmann’s essay presents one possibility of music’s newfound role: it was to reveal the rift between the secular and religious realms by exposing the religiosity of the former and the secularity of the latter. The spectacular quality of a Beethoven symphony came with the sabotaging quality of a Haydn mass. Music could no longer be glorious, only destabilizing. MODERN MUSICAL FORM The “new art” of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven adopted an unstable, mercurial, “sentimental” style. In Hegel’s words, it “invites us to intellectual consideration.” Modern music required a modern appreciation, a thought that Hoffmann reflects on in a late article titled “Zufällige Gedanken beim Erscheinen dieser Blätter” (Casual Reflections on the 65 Hoffmann, Die Serapions-Brüder: Gesammelte Erzählungen und Märchen, 2:359–85. For a discussion on the “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” section’s function within the book, see chapter 4 of Brown, E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Serapiontic Principle. 123 Appearance of This Journal). Appealing directly to the composer, he defends the critic’s job to dissect and elucidate a work. The critic is an intermediary, a “kindred spirit” between the composer and the listener, “who is able, by means of a mysterious magic, to let the people see into the depths of the earth, as through crystal, so that they discover the seed, and realise that from this very seed the entire tree sprang.”66 Implicit in “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik” is the assumption that the pre-modern music of Palestrina’s day required no criticism or analysis to operate as effectively and simply as it did. Sentimental music, on the other hand, was quite different. To a subscriber to the period’s music journals, Hoffmann’s proprietary “mysterious magic” was not as esoteric as he suggests. Some of his contemporaries outlined theories about the structure of modern music, confronting fundamental difficulties broached by the discourse of musical modernity. They extended Schiller and Schlegel’s conception of form to musical works, taking up the question of what exactly about a musical totality animated all of its fragments. The answer came on two levels: globally, critics idealized musical form as a variegated collection of fragments; locally, they catalogued structural components that seemed to bind the work from section to section. While contending with the early German romantic model of sentimental unity, critics responded to prevailing conceptions of musical form. An important predecessor was the notion of the Hauptsatz, a deeply hierarchical model requiring that a work’s 66 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 425–26. “Da kommt aber jener verwandte Geist gegangen und vermag mittelst eines geheimnisvollen Zaubers es zu bewirken, daß die Leute in die Tiefe der Erde wie durch Kristall schauen, den Kern entdecken und ich überzeugen können, daß eben aus diesem Kern der ganze schöne Baum entsproß.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 344. The article was originally published in Hoffmann, “Gedanken bei dem Erscheinen dieser Blätter.” 124 introductory passage regulate the structural and expressive content of its remainder.67 Critics most taken by sentimental unity challenged such a hierarchy, focusing instead on how sections began to exert their own independence and how they rendered the work splintered. Michaelis writes: “Form however relies on that array and position of parts small and large, how they correspond to each other, hoist and carry each other as it were, place each other in light, shade and contrast, and work towards the principal impression that gives the totality its aesthetic character.”68 While this embodies the Schlegelian ideal of a non-hierarchical group of fragments connected by some ethereal force, Michaelis soon betrays that the earlier models could not be shaken completely: How are the larger and smaller parts of music organized and related to the totality, or how does everything diverge? Do the parts stand in an appropriate, natural relationship and in intimate coherence so that the essentials emerge clearly and beautifully? In what relationship is the main subject matter with the supporting material, the theme and main section to the subsidiary and transitional sections? Is it clouded by heaps of embellishments or broad digressions? Are the episodes too long, the contrasts too frequent and garish? Is the main idea properly developed without being long-winded, or accomplished clearly and succinctly? Or does one not even find any main idea, with everything being scattered colorfully without control?69 67 A seminal account of the Hauptsatz is in Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 2:488. For its broader influence, see Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration, 90–102. For period conceptualizations of musical form in compositional treatises, see Burnham, “Form,” 881–83. 68 “Die Form aber beruht auf derjenigen Anordnung und Stellung der Theile im Kleinen und Grossen, wodurch sie einander entsprechen, einander gleichsam heben und tragen, in Licht, Schatten und Contrast setzen, und auf den Haupteindruck hinwirken, der dem Ganzen seinen ästhetischen Charakter gibt.” Michaelis, Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften, 278. 69 “Wie sind die grössern und kleinern Theile der Musik geordnet und zum Ganzen verbunden, oder wie entwickelt sich Alles aus einander? Stehen die Theile im richtigen, natürlichen Verhältniss und im innigen Zusammenhange, so dass das Wesentliche klar und schön hervortritt? In welchem Verhältniss steht der Hauptgegenstand zum Nebenwerk, das Thema und der Hauptsatz zu den Neben- und Zwischensätzen? Ist jener durch gehäufte Zierrathen oder weite Abschweifungen verdunkelt? Sind die Episoden zu lang, die Contraste zu häufig und zu grell? Ist der Hauptgedanke ohne Weitschweifigkeit gehörig entwickelt, oder klar und bündig ausgeführt? Oder trifft man gar keinen Hauptgedanken an, indem Alles ohne Haltung bunt durch einander läuft?” Ibid. 125 For Michaelis, each fragment—by virtue of being a fragment—has a unique profile: it might contribute to the main subject matter, serve as a transition, or even explore other matters altogether different from the main subject matter. His concern about overly conspicuous episodes echoes Schiller, as such a section could infringe on the freedom of surrounding sections. Rather than embrace Jean Paul’s “annihilating humor,” Michaelis retains the hierarchical “Hauptsatz,” “Nebensatz,” and “Zwischensatz” concepts, even as he calls for each individual part to explore its own pursuits. The Schlegelian ideal was elusive. Critics readily adopted the term “character” to address sentimental unity in abstraction. As theorized by Christian Gottfried Körner, the recipient of Schiller’s Kalliasbriefe, it was a term that encompassed a work’s multifaceted disposition.70 In his essay “Über Charakterdarstellung in der Musik” (On the Representation of Character in Music), Körner sought to defend music as a fine art in the wake of Kant’s and Schiller’s doubts.71 He articulates how a modern musical work transcends a mere titillation of the senses by incorporating human freedom to form a coherent, self-standing whole. The work required a careful balance, though, threatening its aesthetic claim from two opposite extremes: if it was too simple it became dull and if it was too chaotic it risked incoherence. A compelling 70 As Matthew Pritchard observes, the term “character” traveled around quite a bit outside of music prior to Körner, such as in the classical discourse of comedy and satire. See Matthew Pritchard, “‘The Moral Background of the Work of Art’: ‘Character’ in German Musical Aesthetics, 1780–1850,” 65–67. 71 See Riggs’s introduction to Körner, “‘On the Representation of Character in Music’: Christian Gottfried Körner’s Aesthetics of Instrumental Music,” 601–2. In his third Critique Kant infamously deemed music “mehr Genuß als Kultur” (“more enjoyment than culture”). See §53 of Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, 205–6. Schiller initially dismisses modern music as something that “flatters the reigning taste that wants only to be pleasantly titillated, and not to be taken hold of, not to be powerfully moved, not to be ennobled,” Schiller, “On the Pathetic,” 48–49. He more or less restores its aesthetic power to that of poetry and sculpture a few years later in Schiller, “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” 150. 126 work actually contained a flux of changing states, and Körner coins the concept “character” to suggest their overarching relation.72 To say that a musical work had a character was to claim that the work cohered together in spite its fragmented appearance. Character was extraordinarily tricky to locate. Körner claims, “Character cannot be perceived directly, either in the real world or in any work of art. Rather, we can only deduce it from that which is contained in the features of individual conditions. It must be asked then, whether, in the series of conditions that music represents, sufficient material is present to form a definite presentation of a character.”73 As Matthew Pritchard has argued, “character” is thoroughly idealist, an abstract feature unable to be located in the specifics of musical material.74 Its conceptualization nonetheless affected how critics viewed the musical material. Character rested upon a compelling series of sections, each its own “individual condition,” that constitutes a totality, with critics employing analysis in order to relate the local assemblage of disparate elements to a central idea. In 1798, within the inaugural volume of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Friedrich Fleischmann extends character’s binding power to the most minor of musical features: “It ought to be understood without difficulty that not only must the key comply with the character of the movement, the meter, the tempo, and the rhythms, but also the form of the melody, and the 72 For a restatement of this claim, see von Weiler, “Ueber den Begriff der Schönheit, als Grundlage einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst,” 121. 73 Körner, “‘On the Representation of Character in Music’: Christian Gottfried Körner’s Aesthetics of Instrumental Music,” 621. “Was wir Charakter nennen, können wir überhaupt weder in der wirklichen Welt, noch in irgend einem Kunstwerke unmittelbar wahrnehmen, sondern nur aus demjenigen folgern, was in den Merkmalen einzelner Zustände enthalten ist. Es fragt sich also nur, ob auch in einer solchen Reihe von Zuständen, wie sie durch Musik dargestellt wird, Stoff genug vorhanden sei, um daraus die bestimmte Vorstellung eines Charakters zu bilden.” Körner, Ästhetische Ansichten: Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 41–42. 74 Pritchard, “‘The Moral Background of the Work of Art’: ‘Character’ in German Musical Aesthetics, 1780-1850,” 67–70. 127 embellishments of the principal voices.”75 A work’s singular character regulated its form and content, yet was also incrementally disclosed by their unfolding. To investigate a work’s sentimental unity on the local level, critics traced the main melodic idea and its subsequent variants, or what is now termed “motivic development.” The motive rescued the work from utter chaos, saturating it with character. Wendt states: “Each work . . . should point during the temporal sequences of its development to a dominant idea and character. This occurs, first, when these sequences develop one thing out of another with necessity and without willfulness, and second, when all other sequences by which the work of art develops are governed by a fundamental idea.”76 This technique fortified the work with “comprehensible connectedness,” while also supporting a variegated modern form. The symphony once again exemplified the modern style by showcasing the binding power of motivic development. With the technique at hand, a composer could incorporate the genre’s dizzying array of musical features while maintaining a semblance of cohesion. According to E. L. Gerber, the modern symphony owed its very success to the motive: In their symphonies, masters are completely able to fill page after page often from a single phrase of two to four measures, through dissection and distribution in various instruments, following the rules of harmony and rhythm, and with the 75 “Es ist sofort ohne Schwierigkeit einzusehen, dass sich nach dem Charakter des Satzes nicht nur die Tonart desselben, die Taktart, das Tempo, der Rhythmus, sondern auch die Formen der Melodien, so wie Coloraturen der Prinzipalstimmen richten müssen.” Fleischmann, “Wie muss ein Tonstück beschaffen seyn, um gut genannt werden zu können? — Was ist erforderlich zu einem vollkommenen Komponisten?,” 212–13. Friedrich Kanne states as much a few decades later in his extensive serialized essay on musical unity. See Kanne, “Der Zauber der Tonkunst: Einheit,” 569. 76 Adapted from Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:199. “Die Künste der Zeit erfordern nothwendig, dass jedes Werk derselben . . . in den Zeitreihen seiner Entwickelung auf einen herrschenden Gedanken und Charakter immer hindente. Dieses geschieht erstens, wenn diese Reihen mit Nothwendigkeit, ohne Willkühr sich eine aus der andern entwickelt, zweytens, wenn alle verschiedene Reihen, in denen sich das Kunstwerk entwickelt, von einem Grundgedanken beherrscht werden.” Wendt, “Gedanken über die neuere Tonkunst, und van Beethovens Musik, namentlich dessen Fidelio,” 385. 128 highest diversity of modulation. As a result, how they achieve that admirable unity in their works of art, which the totality regardless of its diverse parts . . . gives the appearance of an egg whose infinite, but thoroughly similar parts, likewise form an inseparable totality.77 The egg metaphor conveys the idealized fulfillment of sentimental unity: motives grouped fragments into a singular totality, as if each section grew or “hatched” from an original entity. Gerber attributes the rise of the technique to Haydn, whose symphonic style marked a significant departure from prior times. As Gerber notes, motivic development made the lengthening of the musical work possible, and it also served the vital role of making the work appear free of outside influence—its use imbued the work with the appearance of a self-contained system: Not only does this procedure raise the symphony to an autonomous totality, as it is no longer assembled from collected scraps and imitations—indeed, reminiscences— of music (song) used [for a different purpose], it also achieves and ensures an incomparably longer duration of this music, obtained straight from the source, pure, and wrought from counterpoint, than all those instrumental compositions from earlier times written in another manner.78 The motive, in short, freed the symphony from being a patchwork of tunes derived from other sources. Using vivid language, Tieck reiterates Gerber’s observation in an entry titled 77 Adapted from Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style, 180. “Meister in ihren Symphonien oft aus einer einzigen Phrase von zwey bis vier Takten, durch Zergliederung und Vertheilung unter die verschiedenen Instrumente, nach den Regeln der Harmonie und des Rhythmus, bey der höchsten Mannigfaltigkeit im Moduliren, zwey und mehr Seiten voll schreiben können; wie sie dadurch jene vortreffliche Einheit in ihren Kunstwerken erreichen, welch dem Ganzen, ungeachtet seiner vielfältigen Theile . . . das Ansehen eines Ey’s giebt, dessen unendliche, aber durchaus gleichartige Theile, ebenfalls ein unzertrennliches Ganzes bilden.” Gerber, “Eine freundliche Vorstellung über gearbeitete Instrumentalmusik, besonders über Symphonien,” 457–58. 78 “Nicht nur erhebt diese Behandlungsweise die Symphonie zu einem selbstständigen Ganzen, indem sie nun nicht mehr aus zusammengelesenen Flicken und Nachahmungen—wol auch Reminiscenzen—von angewandter Musik, (Gesang) zusammengesetzt ist; sie bewirkt und sichert auch dieser unmittelbar aus der ersten Quelle geschöpften, reinen, und nach dem Contrapunct bearbeiteten Musik eine ungleich längere Dauer, als alle diejenigen Instrumentalsätze, welche in frühern Zeiten in anderer Behandlungsweise geschrieben worden sind.” Gerber, “Eine freundliche Vorstellung über gearbeitete Instrumentalmusik, besonders über Symphonien,” 458. 129 “Symphonien” in his and Wackenroder’s 1799 Phantasien über die Kunst, für Freunde der Kunst (Fantasies about Art for Friends of Art): Symphonies are able to present a drama so colorful, varied, complex, and beautifully developed, as the poets can give us nevermore. Since they reveal the deepest of enigmas in an enigmatic language, they depend on no laws of probability, require no association with story or character, and remain in their purely poetic world. Thus they evade all means to thrill us, to delight us; the concern from start to finish is their subject matter: the purpose itself is present at every moment, initiating and concluding the work of art.79 As with Forkel and Vogler, Tieck found the work to be self-organizing, yet he exemplifies the romantic stance by holding the meaning of the work at a distance. Gerber’s agenda, supported by the critics surrounding him, was to unveil the “enigmatic language” that made possible the simultaneous outer sense of unity and the inner dizzying complexities of the modern symphonic world. Other critics noted that motives, while extremely effective, required careful use of repetition and alteration in order to maintain the balance between monotony and chaos. In an article on repetition and variation, Michaelis states: “Variation forestalls monotony, triviality, in short, that void through which a melody simply becomes worn out or a mere street tune.”80 This idea was not entirely new, as earlier critics had already recognized the 79 “Diese Symphonien können ein so buntes, mannigfaltiges, verworrenes und schön entwickeltes Drama darstellen, wie es uns der Dichter nimmermehr geben kann; denn sie enthüllen in räthselhafter Sprache das Räthselhafteste, sie hängen von keinen Gesetzen der Wahrscheinlichkeit ab, sie brauchen sich an keine Geschichte und an keine Charakter zu schließen, sie bleiben in ihrer rein poetischen Welt. Dadurch vermeiden sie alle M i t t e l , uns hinzureißen, uns zu entzücken, die Sache ist vom Anfange bis zu Ende ihr Gegenstand: der Zweck selbst ist in jedem Momente gegenwärtig, und beginnt und endigt das Kunstwerk.” Tieck and Wackenroder, Phantasien über die Kunst, für Freunde der Kunst, 262–63. 80 Adapted from Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation, 236. “Die Variation kommt der Einförmigkeit, der Trivialität, kurz derjenigen Leere zuvor, durch welche eine Melodie leicht, wie man sagt, abgedroschen, abgenntzt oder zum Gassenhauer wird.” Michaelis, “Ueber die musikalische Wiederholung und Veränderung,” 200. 130 need for musical invention.81 What was new is the repudiation of strict hierarchy: a motive’s development highlighted the independence of one section from another, with the motive itself disguised. Michaelis writes: “But if the basic theme, the main melody, appears clothed in a new manner, under a delicate transparent cloak, so to speak, thus the soul of the listener obtains pleasure, in that it can independently look through the veil, finding the known in the unknown, and can see it develop without effort.” He claims that the process “attractively fuses the new with the old without creating a bizarre mixture of heterogeneous figures.” Here Michaelis echoes Körner’s abstract conception of character by abstracting the main theme away from the surface of the work—it animated the musical material and contributed to the sentimental unity of the work while hovering over it.82 In their pursuit of sentimental unity, critics also scrutinized key relations. The period conception of “modulation” was something more like our “tonicization,” as critics generally understood keys and modulations as local entities without any significant underlying prolongation.83 While the pre-modern style supported the understated use of modulations and a limited range of keys, the modern style abandoned any regulation of key areas or modulations in a musical work. Friedrich Kanne finds key to be a principal constituent of unity, and while he cautions composers against modulating to close or 81 In his introduction Michaelis recalls Neefe’s criticism on musical repetition. See Neefe, “Über die musikalische Wiederholung.” 82 Adapted from Sisman, Haydn and the Classical Variation, 236. “Erscheint aber das Grundthema, die Hauptmelodie, auf eine neue Art eingekleidet, gleichsam unter einer zarten durchsichtigen Hülle, so gewinnt die Seele des Zuhörers an Vergnügen, indem sie selbstthätig durch den Schleier hindurchblickt, das Bekannte in dem Unbekannten auffindet, und aus demselben ohne Anstrengung entwickelt”; “das Neue mit dem Alten reizend verschmolzen zu treffen, ohnen dass jedoch hier eine abentheuerliche Vermischung heterogener Manieren Statt findet.” Michaelis, “Ueber die musikalische Wiederholung und Veränderung,” 200. 83 See Saslaw, “The Concept of Ausweichung in Music Theory, ca. 1770–1832.” 131 distant keys with “destructive willfulness,” he does not exclude any relations in his discussion of unity. He claims: “Unity does not preclude variety, but rather claims itself through its own triumph.”84 A composer arranged a work’s succession of keys so that each belonged freely, without recourse to rule, while simultaneously supporting the character of the whole. As critics repudiated a priori key restrictions, they investigated how key relations could be compellingly presented. Kanne contends that the burden fell on modulatory passages to tie a work together: “The transition or the connection of two remote keys is now of equally great importance for the unity of music, as on the other hand it determines a certain, natural sense very nearly by itself, because the relation of beauty and the interesting relationship in which the two keys stand—that is immediately obvious to the eye—is not to be biased beforehand with false views or improper principles.”85 Kanne also asserts that the composer should connect two sections with care to effect a compelling arrangement.86 Even the commonplace modulation from tonic to dominant required a masterly transition. Modern music no longer supported the convention of the dominant as a normative key area, and so only the work itself could authorize the dominant as well as its preparatory modulation. Hoffmann implies this when he states: “It is as though a hidden, sympathetic bond often connected the most remotely separated keys, and as 84 “Einheit schliesst nicht Mannigfaltigkeit aus, sondern fordert sie gerade zu ihrem Triumphe.” Kanne, “Der Zauber der Tonkunst: Einheit,” 570. 85 “Der Übergang oder die Verbindung der zwey entfernten Tonarten ist nun von eben so grosser Wichtigkeit für die Einheit der Musik, als auf der anderen Seite ein gewisses natürliches Gefühl schon beynahe von selbst entscheidet, weil das Verhältniss der Schönheit und der interessanten Beziehung, in welcher zwey Tonarten stehen, dem sehr schnell in die Augen springt, der durch falsche Ansichten oder unrichtige Grundsätze nicht vorher befangen ist.” Ibid., 577. G. W. Fink seems to have followed Kanne’s criteria in his critiques of Schubert’s modulations a few years later. See Clark, Analyzing Schubert, 67. 86 Kanne, “Der Zauber der Tonkunst: Einheit,” 570. 132 though under certain circumstances an insuperable idiosyncrasy separated even the most closely related keys. The most common and most frequent modulation of all, that from the tonic to the dominant, or vice versa, can seem at times unexpected and unusual, even unpleasant and unbearable.”87 Key areas essentially became fragments, whose juxtapositions were regulated not by rule but rather by the work itself. H O F F M A N N ’ S S E N T I M E N TA L B E E T H O V E N Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is undeniably the most famous text of early German musical romanticism.88 Alongside “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik,” Hoffmann’s introductory praise for the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven constitutes a significant part of the project to secure the meaning of modern music. Yet the majority of the review presents a detailed analysis of the symphony, where Hoffmann grounds the work’s ethereal “purple shimmer of romanticism” in 87 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 158. “Es ist, als ob ein geheimes, sympathetisches Band oft manche entfernt liegende Tonarten verbände und ob unter bewissen Umständen eine unbezwingbare Idiosynkrasie selbst die nächstverwandten Tonarten trenne. Die gewöhnlichste, häufigste Modulation, nämlich aus der Tonika in die Dominante und umgekehrt, erscheint zuweilen unerwartet und fremdartig, oft dagegen widrig und unausstehlich.” E. T. A. Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmanns musikalische Schriften, ed. Edgar Istel (Stuttgart: Greiner und Pfeiffer, 1906), 145. 88 Commentaries on the review are legion. For a discussion of its relation to nineteenth-century analytical traditions, see Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, 2:141–44; and Bent, “Plato—Beethoven: A Hermeneutics for Nineteenth-Century Music?” For a consideration of it alongside A. B. Marx’s and Berlioz’s reviews of the symphony, see chapter 5 of Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics. For its relation to German idealist philosophy, see chapter 3 of Bonds, Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven. For a general discussion of Hoffmann as a reviewer of Beethoven’s works in the AmZ, see Schnaus, E. T. A. Hoffmann als BeethovenRezensent der Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Hoffmann also reutilizes parts of the review with others from his later review of Beethoven’s Op. 70 piano trios in the Kreisleriana section titled “Beethovens Instrumental-musik” from his first book, Fantasiestücke in Callot’s Manier. See Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 23–25. 133 concrete terms.89 According to Holly Watkins, Hoffmann developed a metaphor of “musical depth” to aid his analytical endeavor, which “preserves the impenetrable mystery of the genius’s creations while simultaneously attesting to their rational construction, however disjunct they may appear on the surface.”90 Beethoven’s work was seemingly opaque yet held an underlying logic, that Schlegelian spiritual central point which required elucidation. To plumb the work’s “depths,” Hoffmann utilized an analytical toolkit supplied by his critic-colleagues. Hoffmann’s agenda was to demonstrate sentimental unity, as illustrated by the introductory paragraphs of his discussion of the opening movement. He first notes the obvious: the work begins with the “Hauptgedanke,” a motive “which subsequently appears again and again in a variety of forms.” Much like Michaelis, Hoffmann cannot shake the hierarchical model of the Hauptsatz or the motivic development that it precipitates. He includes a musical example of first group through to the grand pause at measure 21, boldly claiming that this passage “determines the character of the whole piece,” essentially calling it the Hauptsatz.91 Following a grand pause there is a new fragment: the beginning of the transition, a section incorporating the main motive. Then the second theme enters which, while uniquely lyrical, maintains the work’s character. Hoffmann dutifully traces the main 89 Dahlhaus describes the review both as the founding document of musical romanticism and as a watershed moment in the history of music analysis. See Dahlhaus, Die Musiktheorie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, 2:227–31. 90 Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought: From E. T. A. Hoffmann to Arnold Schoenberg, 44. 91 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 239. “In der Folge, mannigfach gestaltet, immer wieder durchblickt”; “Entscheidet den Charakter des ganzen Stucks.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 37. 134 motive as he divides the exposition into discrete parts, determining each of their functions within the totality. Hoffmann considers the remainder of the movement bit by bit as well, referring to each section’s key areas and motivic content. In line with Fleischmann and Gerber, he concludes that the motive exhibits a formidable binding power: There is no simpler idea than that on which Beethoven has based his entire Allegro, and with admiration one becomes aware of how he was able to relate all the secondary ideas and episodes through the rhythmic content of this simple theme, so that they only serve to reveal facets of the character of the totality ever gradually, which the theme itself could only suggest.92 Yet here Hoffmann tempers his grand claim about the regulative capacity of the opening measures. While the first group of the exposition determined the character of the whole, it could not dictate how the character was to be revealed—it could not undercut the freedom of the other sections. Each fragment made an individual contribution to the character, collectively forming the whole. While Hoffmann takes significant pains to show that the work has a singular character, he nevertheless attempts to give each section some leeway. The finale offers an illuminating example: the joyful second theme at m. 44 initially strikes him as foreign (see EX. 3.1). Robin Wallace notes that Hoffmann brought attention to this moment to appreciate the movement’s impetuousness.93 But Hoffmann sees this as a knot to be untied, subsequently recognizing that this curious theme gets significantly worked out in the 92 “Es gibt keinen einfacheren Gedanken, als den, welchen der Meister dem ganzen Allegro zum Grunde legte und mit Bewunderung wird man gewahr, wie er alle Nebengedanken, alle Zwischensätze, durch rhythmischen Verhalt jenem einfachen Thema so anzureihen wusste, dass sie nur dazu dienten, den Charakter des Ganzen, den jenes Thema nur andeuten konnte, immer mehr und mehr zu entfalten.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 43. 93 Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics, 140. 135 . #œ œ ˙ ™ ˙™ œ œ œ œœ œ œ. & #œœœœ œœ œ 45 { p cresc. œœ. œ œœ œœ œœ. œœ# œœ œœ œ œ œ f œ œ3 œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ #œ̇ œœ œ œœœœœœ œœ#œœœ . #œ. j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ#œnœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œœ 3 ? #œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ w œ œ #œœ œœ œ 3 Example 3.1: Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, mvt. 4, mm. 45–49 (reduction) development, complete with new harmonic and contrapuntal features. Its relation to the whole is incrementally revealed, offering some closure to its earlier foreignness: “The character already apparent in its original guise fully emerges.”94 Skirting this difficulty, he asserts that the work as a whole maintained a unity of one feeling, evinced by its motivic content and orchestration.95 Perhaps Hoffmann realizes that he was papering over the cracks of the finale, and so at the close he claims that the work has a “deeper relationship” that analysis cannot account for, one that “only speaks from heart to heart.”96 His pursuit of sentimental unity finishes with the realization that the work’s unity cannot be fully explicated. No matter how much analysis can be done, how many keys, modulations, motives, and orchestral effects elucidate the totality of the tortuous symphonic world, some aspect of the work’s logic remains beyond the listener’s comprehension. Here Hoffmann inserts a sentimental gap between analysis and the critic, revealing analysis itself to be a fragmentary pursuit and throwing into question the efficacy of the 94 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 245. “Der Charakter, der sich schon in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt aussprach, ganz entwickelt.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 43. 95 For the political context of Hoffmann’s interpretation, see Rumph, “A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism,” 61–65. 96 “Tiefere Verwandtschaft”; “Spricht oft nur aus dem Geiste zum Geiste.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 51. 136 critic’s “mysterious magic.” While the contributors to the elegiac discourse of musical modernity sought to ground music in the unstable present through criticism, they could not wholly endorse a critical method. A bleak conclusion emerges from Hoffmann’s review, particularly once taken with the arguments established in “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik.” Despite even the best criticism, the “new art” of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven would remain elusive and ambiguous. To use Tieck’s words, the symphony still harbored “the deepest of enigmas.” While Beethoven’s music demanded criticism to elucidate its inner structure, it also served to disrupt modern life in a fit of ineffable, otherworldly force. Such ambitions were gloriously foreign to Palestrina. 4 . R O M A N T I C I Z I N G A N A LY S I S , FREEDOM OR H OW TO EMBRACE If a subscriber to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in October of 1799 was absorbed enough on the week of the ninth to make it to the issue’s “Recensionen” section, they would have encountered an indulgent passage in an anonymous review of Beethoven’s Op. 10 piano sonatas. The otherwise unremarkable contribution concludes with a vivid account of a moment from the rondo finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 7 in D, Op. 10 No. 3: The reviewer is obliged to present the readers with a nice idea that brought him much joy. In the final rondo that is completely distinctive, after the bass has accompanied a slurred passage with rushing sixteenth notes, it pauses on a seventh chord on A. The bass canonically takes up the echo of the preceding theme and now, most delightfully in all brevity and calm, runs through the following significant harmony in syncopated motion . . . after which the conclusion is carried through with somewhat austere power in chromatic runs of sixteenth notes, upand downward, and in other figurations, while the bass still sticks with the previous short themes with which the rondo began.1 The “significant harmony” begins with 10–7 linear intervallic pattern after a modal shift to G minor, striking the critic as an effective passage to poise the movement’s close (see EX. 4.1). A few years later a critic far less admiring, J. G. K. Spazier, wrote of Beethoven’s Op. 31 Nos. 1 & 2 piano sonatas: “A certain carelessness has been maintained according to 1 Adapted from Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:143–44. “Dafür muss Rec. den Lesern einen hübschen Gedanken zum Besten geben, der ihm viel Freude gemacht hat. Nachdem im lezten ganz eigenen Rondo der Bass eine gebundene Stelle mit rauschenden Sechzehntheilen begleitet hat, bleibt diese in der Septime von A stehen. Der Bass ergreift den Nachhall des vorigen Satzes, canonish und nun führt sich folgende bedeutende Harmonie in syncopirter Bewegung in aller Kürze und Stille höchst erfreulich durch . . . worauf denn der Schluss in chromatisirenden Sechzehnteilläufen auf und ab und in andern Figuren, während der Bass immer noch bey den vorigen kurzen Sätzen bleibt, womit das Rondo anhub, mit etwas herber Gewalt durchgetrieben wird.” Anon., “Recension: Trois Sonates pour le Clavecin ou Pianoforte, comp. et dediées à Comtesse de Browne née de Vietinghoff par Louis van Beethoven,” 27. 138 U w ## w & 99 { U ? ## ww w œ œ œ œœœœ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ # & # ‰ œœ bœ œ Œ 102 { ? ## œ bœ Œ # j &# œ # œœ ? ## œj œ 105 { j j œ œ #œœ œœ œœ œ j j œ œ #œ œ œ œ Œ j œœ œœ œ œ j œ œ œ œ j j ‰ bœ œ bœ b œœ bœœ b œœ pp ‰ œœ nœœ œœ J J ˙ p ˙˙ ˙ j j œ bœ œ œœ b œœ œœ œ nœj œ œ J nœ œ j j j j ≈ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ œ œJ œJ œ œJ U œ™ œ ™™ œU œ™ ‰ ‰ pp œ œ j j œœ œ œ œœ œj œ œ bœJ Ó œ œ œ Œ ‰ œ œœ Œ j j œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ nœœj œœ œ J bœ b œœ nœ œ j œœ œ j œœ nœ n œ # œ œ #œ œ nœ #œ bœ œ œ œ œ #œ œ n œ ‰ œ w fp Œw œ ‰ œJ Example 4.1: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 7 in D, Op. 10 No. 3, mvt. 4, mm. 99–107 which some themes are brought forth without any connection. Thus, instead of one totality, they contain three to four that have either a ridiculous relation to each other or none at all.”2 In the first review, the anonymous contributor recognizes a moment that stands out in sharp relief, whose material he feels little need to connect to any main theme, let alone anything else in the work. In the second one, Spazier finds such digressions rampant in the sonatas at hand, admonishing them for splintering each work. Bereft of its regulatory capacity and its explanatory power, the Hauptsatz no longer held the influence it once did. 2 Adapted from Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:187. “Ein gewisser Schlendrian erhalten hat, nach welchem einige Sätze ohne alle Verbindung hingestellt werden, so daß sie, statt Eines Ganzen, deren drei bis vier enthalten, die auf einander entweder gar keine oder eine lächerliche Beziehung haben.” Spazier, “Repertoire des Clavecinistes,” 611. 139 While neither review constitutes a comprehensive analysis—though the first one concludes with a strikingly analytical passage—each demonstrates the new conception of sentimental unity: a work was a system of fragments which seemed self-determining, yet still submitted to a totality. One critic declares a work’s unity fulfilled and the other finds it questionable, yet each recognizes the fragmentary nature of modern composition. Such was the state of affairs for the discourse of analysis in the first decades of the nineteenth century, which found its home in many different journals and mainly within the Germanspeaking world. In their reviews and analyses, critics questioned the Hauptsatz, that concept which in the hands of J. N. Forkel and Abbé G. J. Vogler demonstrated a harmonious union between musical meaning and form. With the dissolution of the Hauptsatz the relationship crumbled. Motivic development and key relations no longer readily gave access to a work’s meaning; indeed, as the elegiac moderns of last chapter realized, music’s meaning in an unstable modern world seemed far more fraught than ever before. To most critics this concern manifested in a new conception of musical meaning encapsulated by the term “character,” which took on the burden of a work’s impenetrable essence (see chapter 3). But while character resided in every structural component of the work, it could not easily be found—there was a seemingly infinite chasm between a work’s meaning and its material components. A work’s structural components could only depict its character obliquely, never constraining the boundless capacities of the human imagination. With character seemingly transcendent and structure profane, critics no longer traced motivic development and key relations with the confidence to show a synthesis of nature and freedom. Instead they traced these techniques to show a rift between the 140 formerly harmonious fusion: the work displayed an abundance of freedom that transcended the trappings of the material world. Critics recognized that the work could no longer readily adopt musical conventions—it stood at a sentimental distance from them; it was forced to exploit them, to deploy them in experimental ways, to play with them to maximize the imaginative force of modern music. To make sense of this new relation to musical material, critics established stylistic histories, just as the elegiac moderns did. Looking to recent works, they divided contemporary musical practice from composition mere decades earlier. They also developed novel interpretative lenses for conceptualizing the work and its components, including dramatic narratives for understanding larger structures of sonata form. In fact, in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, critics and analysts began to look at classical-period music in ways that appear uncannily similar to how theorists and analysts approach the repertory today. A N A LY S I S I N M U S I C A L L I F E Analysis became an indispensable branch of the musical life in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. As recent musicological scholarship has emphasized, the period oversaw the rise of musical institutions and practices foundational to culture ever since, such as the formation of a Western musical canon, the proliferation of public concert life, and the rise of music’s commodification due to an expanding bourgeois class.3 Musical discourse in this period had flourished in journals, particularly in the Leipzig-based weekly 3 For canons, see Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology. For concerts, see McVeigh, London Concert Life from Mozart to Haydn. For the musical marketplace, see Carew, “The Consumption of Music.” For accounts of the social changes as they varied across each of the major European metropolitan areas, see Ringer, The Early Romantic Era: Between Revolutions, 1789–1848. 141 periodical first published in 1798, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (hereafter AmZ). Such institutions and practices constructed a vibrant music cultural sphere across the metropolitan areas of Europe. By evaluating musical works, critics served a fundamental role in the development of musical thought. It was no perfunctory duty. To the elegiac moderns of last chapter, the mere idea that a work ought to be evaluated demonstrated a historical break from a harmonious past, reflecting anxieties about the purpose of art in a fractured and alienated present. The criteria for evaluation were also not straightforward: in accordance with Friedrich Schlegel the musical work itself created the rules for it to be judged, and many reviewers expended a tremendous amount of effort just to extract a work’s unique terms for its evaluation. There were common structural markers of value—such as the deployment of sophisticated key relations, motivic development, and contrapuntal techniques—which inevitably promoted the musicological privileging of German composers and instrumental genres. Alongside these developments, the notion of a work underwent a radical transformation. As Lydia Goehr argues, around the turn of the nineteenth century, music’s ontological status shifted from a relatively disposable, performance-based practice in the court and the church to one that embraced distinct, abstract “works” to be studied, performed, celebrated, and—consequently—critiqued.4 But even if the “work” was no longer disposable, the profusion of new publications meant that plenty of works still were. As critics were keenly aware, more and more composers were publishing an increasing number of works with the help of a blossoming 4 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. On the ground level, as it were, the transformation occurred at different rates and different times across the metropolitan areas of Europe. See Talbot, The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? 142 music publishing industry, and the musical marketplace was approaching downright oversaturation. Using a colorful metaphor, Kanne observes the issue with urgency: Just as all the farmers are thinking only of increasing and improving their sheep farms and in the end will painfully feel the noticeable lack of other useful domestic animals, in the same way the mania for music, the craze for composition in our time, has made such rapid progress that a calm, experienced observer almost shudders when he surveys the huge, universal flood of music in which the life of true art finally seems to be buried.5 With the word Sündflut Kanne characterizes print music’s inundation as a crisis of biblical proportions. As Chad Wellmon recognizes, the modern Enlightened subject—as recognized a few decades before Kanne’s remark—was faced with a deluge of information: “Germans of the late eighteenth century saw themselves as having been infested by a plague of books, circulating contagiously among the reading public.”6 A critic’s duty to review and analyze new works constituted an act of indexing material culture, of determining what works in the veritable flood of publications were worth paying attention to. This indexing could be considered a “managerial function,” the “disciplining” of the overwhelming amount of print documents of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.7 The proliferation of music documents and the rise of journalistic discourse was foundational for the discipline of musicology. Wellmon observes that scholarly journals contributed to the rise of autonomous scholarly disciplines—all embracing a new 5 Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:58. “Gerade so, wie alle Landwirthe nur auf Vermehrung und Veredlung ihrer Schäfereyen denken, und am Ende den fühlbaren Mangel anderer nützlicher Hausthier schmerzlich empfinden werden—eben so hat die Musiksucht, besonders die Compositionswuth in unserer Zeit so reissende Fortschritte gemacht, dass den ruhigen und erfahrenen Beobachter beynahe ein Grauen ankommt, wenn er die grosse, allgemeine Musiksündfluth überschaut, in der das Leben wahrer Kunst endlich begraben zu werden scheint.” Kanne, “Über den fühlbaren Mangel an neuen grossen Oratorien,” 4. 6 Wellmon, Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University, 4. 7 Pasanek and Wellmon, “The Enlightenment Index,” 376. 143 “science”—to be canonized in the emergent German research university of the early nineteenth century: “Every article situated itself within an intellectual tradition that it helped construct and maintain . . . Authors and editors presented every article and the journals themselves as a supplement to science as a whole. Journals were oriented to the production of future work.”8 While the academic discipline of musicology did not surface in its modern form until a century later, journalistic discourse as practiced within the AmZ nevertheless contributed to something of a proto-discipline. Contemporary intellectual life had forsaken the idealized model of universal erudition and instead had fractured into specialized areas of study. With the rise of its own journals and institutions, music became a distinct subject requiring specialists to catalogue its own foundations, methods, and content.9 As the practice of analysis expanded, it became increasingly beholden to the material world, at once tethered to the economic interests of the publisher and the physical constraints of the journalistic medium. The act of reviewing a work was inexorably tied to the work’s status as a commodity, as the journal’s publishing house would often encourage its critics to review the recent additions to its catalogue. The vast majority of reviews took up no more than a few columns, and so critics had to be judicious about their content. As Carl Maria von Weber points out in an article on criticism: “Lack of space, paucity of musical illustrations and all the other drawbacks inseparable from publication in a journal 8 Wellmon, Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University, 70. 9 For more on the period’s critics who sought to discipline European art music, see chapter 1 of Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848. 144 only increase the amount of time and care needed for [reviewing a work].”10 As well, in the AmZ and elsewhere, some analytical reviews were featured as leading articles while others were buried toward the end of the issue, and lengthier reviews were often serialized. There were formatting considerations as well. The length of a review was not standardized, nor was the potentially extravagant practice of employing musical examples to illustrate analytical points. When analyzing specific passages, some reviewers would avoid musical examples altogether while others quoted liberally from the score, sometimes a piano or single-stave reduction, sometimes a full score. The excerpts could have also served as advertising for the given work, particularly if they were of the major themes from each movement, yet some were of less tuneful passages of analytical interest that did not necessarily whet the appetite of the consumer. As ensemble works were usually published in parts, full-score examples and reductions were quite a bit of work to create. One reviewer noted such a material sacrifice on the page by reducing of a piano quintet “with repeated voices omitted to save room.”11 And it was with some effort that Hoffmann incorporated a plethora of full-score examples into his review of Beethoven’s Op. 70 set of two piano trios, explicitly noting that in order to properly guide the reader through his analysis, “[The reviewer] has not hesitated to illustrate the most complicated 10 Weber, “Friedrich Fesca and Criticism,” 266–67. “Je schwerer und seltner dieses immer zu erlangen ist, durch die Beschränktheit des Raumes, der Beyspiele, und anderer nun einmal in der Natur einer Zeitschrift liegenden Hindernisse: je mehr Fleis und Zeitaufwand hat eine Arbeit der Art das Recht zu fordern.” Weber, “Ueber die Tondichtungsweise des Hrn. Concertmeisters, Feska, in Carlsruhe; nebst einigen Bemerkungen über Kritikenwesen überhaupt,” 586. 11 “Wenn wir die, hier nur verstärkenden andern Stimmen, den Raum zu schonen, weglassen.” Anon., “Recension: Quintetto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement de deux Violons, Viole et Violoncelle, composé et dédié à Monsieur Himmel, Maitre de Chapelle de Sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, par Louis Ferdinand, Prince de Prusse,” 458. 145 and difficult part of the score in full.”12 From a material perspective, however, Hoffmann’s lavish provisions were not without consequence: instead of being integrated into the text of the review, the musical examples were printed in a supplementary pamphlet (“musikalische Beylage”) to be included with the issue.13 A wider survey of of early nineteenth-century criticism reveals a remarkable degree of anonymity, at least from a modern perspective, for the authorship of journal reviews and general articles. Though it now poses a problem of attribution for modern scholars who chronicle the historical archive, it had a particular significance for the protodiscipline. When reflecting on the practice of criticism in his aforementioned article, Weber admits that he signs his reviews with his own name because he thinks of himself more as a performer than an objective critic, feeling the need to respond to a sensed general loathing over the convention of critical anonymity. He claims: I believe that there is much to be said in favour of anonymity. You have only to ask yourself whether an anonymous criticism is not more representative of popular opinion (or, in other words, of pure unprejudiced truth), always provided that it is scrupulous in thoroughness and benevolent in attitude. Signed criticism is almost impossible to dissociate from subsidiary ideas that involuntarily throng the reader's mind in connexion with the writer. This is particularly true of unfavourable judgements, which are almost inevitably associated with personal prejudice, whereas one is ready to accept a favourable opinion from any source.14 12 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 308. “Zur Erreichung dieses Zwecks scheute er es auch nicht, die Partitur des kompliziertesten, schwierigsten Teils ganz einzurücken.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 126. 13 At the end of the review Hoffmann appeals directly to the publishers themselves: “It is to be hoped that happier circumstances in the world of art will make it possible for publishers to issue Beethoven’s instrumental works in score.” Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 325. A similar appeal is in Anon., “Recension: Septour pour 2 Cors, Clarinette in B, 2 Violons, Alto et Basse, composé par G. Winter. Oeuv. 10,” 446. 14 Weber, “Friedrich Fesca and Criticism,” 268. “Im Ganzen halte ich sehr viel von dem Nutzen und der Wirkung der Anonymität; und man frage sich selbst nur recht ehrlich, ob ein so gegebenes Urtheil—vorausgesetzt, dass es alle Eigenschaften eines dergleichen rechtlichen habe: das heisst: dass es mit Gründlichkeit und Wohlwollen ausgesprochen sey—nicht viel mehr als Repräsentant der Volksstimme, oder mit andern Worten, der reinen, rücksichtlosen Wahrheit erscheine und einwirke, als das mit einem Namen bezeichnete, bey dem wir uns selten von allen, zugleich sich unwillkürlich 146 To Weber anonymity was the bearer of faithful and objective content. Whether period music journals consciously cultivated such an image for their public, they certainly followed the custom of anonymity even when the contributor was of particular renown. Time and time again, reviewers reached to analysis once they were given the space in journals to publish extensive reviews, though they were often self-conscious about what they were about to do and sometimes gave notice that they were about to delve into the nuts and bolts of the work. Some of the reviewers were even defensive about it, a few offering a disclaimer or an apologia to frame their technical discussion. For instance, the anonymous reviewer of Josef Lipavský’s Pathétique sonata from 1805 offers a lengthy preamble outlining what a close-reading of the work can reveal.15 He argues: We will inquire into the systematic arrangement and realization, revealing nearly everything as a broad and concrete overview, a sure hand, a rare higher economy. We will consider the intrinsically artistic and technical arrangement and realization, driven along in piano works by a true coherence and steady persistence, ingenious expansion, even scholarly argument and rigor, in a free style with modern phrases of melody and harmony, and without rigidity or affectation.16 mit eindrängenden, individuellen Nebenideen rein halten können, und besonders beym Tadel gar zu geneigt sind, in der Person selbst, etwas zur Entschuldigung unserer Fehler aufzusuchen. Das Lob lässt man sich schon eher von Jedem gefallen.” Weber, “Ueber die Tondichtungsweise des Hrn. Concertmeisters, Feska, in Carlsruhe; nebst einigen Bemerkungen über Kritikenwesen überhaupt,” 588. 15 Lipavský (1772–1810) was a Bohemian composer who studied composition in Vienna under J. B. Vaň hal and Mozart. See Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, 15:216–17. 16 “Fragen wir nach wissenschaftlicher Anordnung und Ausführung—es zeigt fast alles einen weiten und festen Ueberblick, eine sichere Hand, eine jezt seltene, höhere Oekonomie. Betrachten wir die eigentlich artistische und technische Anordnung und Ausführung—es lässt sich das wirklich Vollstimmige und regelmässig Durchgehaltene, geistreich Erweiterte, ja selbst die gelehrte Auseinandersetzung und Strenge, in freyem Stil, modernen Wendungen der Melodie und Harmonie, und ohne Steifheit oder Künsteley, in Arbeiten für das Klavier kaum weiter treiben.” Anon., “Recension: Grande Sonate pathétique pour le Pianoforte, composée et dediée à Mr. Antoine Salieri—par Joseph Lipavsky. Oeuvr. 27,” 92–93. 147 After such high hopes, the tone shifts radically over the course of the next few lines. A paragraph later, the author laments: “Now would be the time to analyze the three movements bit by bit, but unfortunately every human achievement also demands space! And moreover, for my part, I do not think that much emerges from any such analyses of poetic and artistic works.” He continues: “The spirit proper, thus what is essential, does not permit itself to be analyzed, not even through vivid words, and particular examples give only a poor idea of the totality of an accomplished work, only what concerns the technical realization. Artists who follow their instincts find the dissection chimerical.”17 This critical aversion to analysis resonated with Goethe’s scientific writings, such as when he admits his own hesitation with dissection and taxonomy in the course of his study of plants: “Through repetition the names were engraved in my memory, and I gained greater skill in analysis—without conspicuous success however, for I was by nature averse to classification and counting.”18 Analysis carried baggage Forkel and Vogler never had to fret over; it was now a fraught venture. Sometimes the struggle with words led to liberal quoting of the score in lieu of verbal explanation. A reviewer of a septet by Peter Winter—whose symphony from decades earlier so captivated Vogler—nearly gave up altogether when he found an intriguing moment he wanted to highlight: “Of the final movement (Rondo Moderato), 17 “Jezt wäre es nun wol Zeit, die drey Sätze der Sonate stückweise zu analysiren: aber leider will jedes menschliche Werk auch Raum haben! Und überdies—ich, für meinen Theil, glaube nicht, dass bey allen solchen Analysen, poetischer oder artistischer Werke, viel heraus komme. Der Geist selbst, mithin die Hauptsache, lässt sich nicht zerlegen, nicht einmal durch Worte anschaulich machen, und einzelne Beyspiele geben vom Ganzen, wenn das ein ausgeführtes Werk ist, nur eine dürftige Idee, selbst was nur technische Ausführung anlangt; der seinem Triebe folgende Künstler findet das Zergliedern chimärisch.” Ibid., 93–94. 18 Goethe, Goethe’s Botanical Writings, 155. 148 which is to be considered a polonaise, the exquisite group of figures and the introduction to the [rondo] theme near the end deserve to be excavated. Although the space of these pages is quite limited, the reviewer cannot refrain from writing out [in full score] this place which cannot be described well with words.”19 His “excavation” marks the most analytical moment of the review, and despite his misgivings about description, he gives it a shot on the following page in a cramped space underneath the substantial music example employing two systems with six staves each. But the message is clear: analysis could only get the reader so far. The mere prospect of analysis uncovered anxieties about the sensed division between a work’s meaning and its form or, in the Lipavský review, its “spirit” and “technical realization.” J. A. Apel exemplifies this division in a claim about instrumental music’s prestige: “The symphony is . . . an artwork of a particular character, and thus it is the representation of an idea through the sensuous appearances of tones in harmony and rhythm. Yet the idea itself is not bound to the tones; these are only the means (the sensuous material) through which [the idea] appears as a musical work of art.”20 Apel’s claim about the symphony could be expanded to the entirety of modern musical 19 “Vom lezten Satze, (Rondo Moderato) welcher als Polonaise zu betrachten ist, verdient vorzüglich nahe am Schlusse die Gruppirung der Figuren und die Einleitung in das Thema ausgehoben zu werden. Obgleich der Raum dieser Blätter sehr beschränkt ist, so kann sich Rec. Doch nicht enthalten, diese Stelle, welche sich nicht gut mit Worten beschreiben lässt, auszuschreiben.” There appears to be a misprint in the title, attributing authorship to “G. Winter.” Anon., “Recension: Septour pour 2 Cors, Clarinette in B, 2 Violons, Alto et Basse, composé par G. Winter. Oeuv. 10,” 444. 20 “Ist die Sinfonie . . . ein Kunstwerk von bestimmtem Charakter, so ist sie Darstellung einer Idee durch die sinnlichen Erscheinungen der Töne in Harmonie und Rhythmus. Die Idee selbst aber ist nicht an die Töne gefesselt; diese sind nur das Mittel, (das sinnliche Material,) in welchem jene als musikalisches Kunstwerk erscheint.” Apel, “Musik und Poesie,” 450. 149 composition: music’s “sensuous materials” were now too vulgar to provide unfettered access to music’s “idea.” For Kanne the division between meaning and form prompted a preemptive defense of his serialized analysis of every solo piano work of Mozart, a massive undertaking discussed later in this chapter. In his introduction, he attempted to quell readers’ concerns that he might be doing some sort of violence to the composer’s oeuvre: May our aesthetic pleasure be in contemplating the inner workings of the organic construction of Mozart’s keyboard works, in sensing the spiritual threads of connection, in eavesdropping on the workshop of the great immortal master in the pious sense, which makes desecration through the critical admirer’s overly brazen rashness impossible. Thus we fear not that this beginning might be called a blasphemy, because it will only be the spirit of deepest devotion to this sublime genius that guides and determines our closer illumination of the true beauty of [Mozart’s] rich works.21 If the inner workings of a work could only be observed from a sentimental distance, the conundrum now appeared to be figuring out what exactly analysis could do if the work’s meaning was no longer accessible. As last chapter showed, Hoffmann’s conclusion to his review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony ruefully broached the issue, though it did not get very far. Kanne’s defense is unabashedly religious in scope: so long as the reader believes that the work has an ungraspable character, then he can utilize the analysis to get ever so slightly closer to it. The alternative, to approach a work with the hubris that its inner workings could be fully revealed, was nothing short of sacrilege. After Forkel and Vogler, 21 “Unser sey das schöne Vergnügen, den organischen Bau der Mozart'schen Clavierwerke in seinem lnnern zu beschauen, die geistigen Fäden der Verbindung zu ahnen, und so die Werkstatt des grossen unsterblichen Meisters mit dem frommen Sinne zu belauschen, welcher die Entweihung durch allzu dreiste Voreiligkeit dem kritischen Bewunderer unmöglich macht. Desshalb fürchten wir auch nicht, dass diess Beginnen eine Blasphemie genannt werden dürfte, weil nur der Geist der innigsten Verehrung gegen diesen erhabenen Genius uns in dieser näheren Beleuchtung seiner an wahrer Schönheit reichen Werke, einzig und allein leiten und bestimmen wird.” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 18–19. 150 analysis could only do so much, and its practitioners were often defensive about its practice and wary of its limitations. A FREER STYLE While the work’s character seemed utterly elusive, its materials repeatedly invited interrogation. As the last chapter demonstrated, critics defined a modern style by constructing a quasi-mythical past and comparing contemporary musical practices to it. Those that were influenced by the tenets of early German romanticism sought to define a modern musical style in contrast to an idyllic antiquity from Palestrina’s day, recognizing an elegiac, unstable, sentimental style. While this interpretative model was influential, critics also found other bygone musical periods ripe for comparison, this time much closer to the present and with a clearer historical record. By the first few decades of the nineteenth century, critics conceptualized modern music as a repudiation of musical conventions from the early eighteenth century, and most telling in their writings was the role of texture. Contemporaneous with the writings of the elegiac moderns was J. K. F. Triest, presumed author of a serialized AmZ article from 1801 titled “Bemerkungen über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert” (Remarks on the Development of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century).22 In it, Triest establishes a 22 As with many other unsigned AmZ entries, this essay’s authorship remains an open question. The strongest evidence for Triest is Gerber’s attribution in his 1814 “Triest” entry in Gerber, Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler, 4:389–90. Gerber was likely relying on the journal index published at the end of the year’s run, which credits Triest. Yet Martha BrucknerBigenwald’s 1938 dissertation on the AmZ’s beginnings attributes the article to a Dresden-based “G. Tolev,” a figure with almost no historical record besides a few other AmZ articles bearing his name. See Bruckner-Bigenwald, Die Anfänge der Leipziger Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung, 93. 151 tripartite model of recent music history, one that endures in scholarly discourse into the present. In modern terms, in the beginning was the Baroque period: “The first period was dominated by thorough, but compared to the other branches of music, one-sided treatment of harmony.” This was followed by what we now term the galant period: “In the second, people sought to add grace and loveliness by means of more melodious, comprehensible compositions.” These stages made way for the modern style: “In the third, variety, richness, and liveliness were characteristic qualities of our music, but often at some cost to the advantages of the first two periods.”23 Instrumental works were the primary vehicle for the final stage, and contemporary composers were free to mix elements from any prior period. Triest remarks: Those artists who either clearly recognized or intuited the true destiny of [instrumental music] now combined in their works the thoroughness of the first period with the songfulness of the second, adding striking new elements in the process. They took advantage of the more developed internal and external tonal mechanism to transform voices that had been mere accompaniments into more obbligato parts. This was done both in works for solo instruments (for example, in Bruckner-Bigenwald conducted research in the vast archives of the AmZ’s publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel, prior to their partial destruction in a bombing raid during World War II. Modern English and German musicological literature has consistently credited Triest, following a citation to Gerber in Ruhnke, “Moritz Hauptmann und die Wiederbelebung der Musik J. S. Bachs,” 309. Breaking this trend, the new Répertoire international de la presse musicale edition of the AmZ transfers authority to Bruckner-Bigenwald by crediting Tolev. See Hass, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1798–1848. Most recently, Matthew Pritchard has called attention to the ambiguity of the authorship: “Triest’s name was most likely printed by mistake, or in the wrong place, in the journal’s Autorenregister for that year.” See Pritchard, “Music in Balance: The Aesthetics of Music after Kant, 1790–1810,” 54– 55. 23 Triest, “Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,” 386. “In der ersten Periode herrschte gründliche, aber in Rücksicht auf die übrigen Zweige der Tonkunst einseitige Behandlung der Harmonie. In der zweyten suchte man hiermit Anmuth und Lieblichkeit durch mehr melodieuse fassliche Kompositionen zu vereinigen. In der dritten waren Mannigfaltigkeit, Fülle und Lebhaftigkeit—doch oft auf Unkosten der Vorzüge in den beyden ersten Perioden—charakteristische Eigenschaften unsrer Musik.” Triest, “Bemerkungen über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” 444. 152 piano sonatas, with the bass and later even the middle voices) and in combinations of several instruments, for example in symphonies, quartets, etc.24 Musical texture was the marker of stylistic change between periods, with the first predominately polyphonic and the second homophonic. The third period exhibited a proliferation of textural possibilities, exploring a spectrum between polyphony and homophony. Triest celebrates Haydn as the exemplar of the final period, a composer whose music masterfully combines exceptional Italian melody, Baroque counterpoint, and instrumentation, all with a characteristic “light treatment of rhythm” and humor.25 Prefiguring Hegel, Triest essentially claims that the techniques of the previous ages were free to be deployed in the present age in untraditional combinations. The new style was unfettered, with the ability to exhibit an unprecedented amount of freedom. A decade or two later, critics would keep the tripartite historical scheme but separate the contemporary musical age from Mozart and Haydn. In 1824, A. B. Marx elaborated on Triest’s periodization at the end of the inaugural volume of the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. First came the “contrapuntal” age, with J. S. Bach as its exemplar. Marx observes: Invention and imagination in this age were not yet matured for the notion of musical ideas—they [only] would have been able to be effectively represented in quick succession. [The age] still required dwelling on an idea at length in order for 24 Triest, “Remarks on the Development of the Art of Music in Germany in the Eighteenth Century,” 370. “Diejenigen Künstler, welche die wahre Bestimmung dieser Gattung von Musik, wo nicht deutlich erkannten, doch fühlten, vereinigten nun in ihren Werken die Gründlichkeit der ersteren Periode mit der Sagbarkeit in der zweyten, und thaten das Frappante noch hinzu. Sie benuzten die grössere Ausbildung des inneren und äusseren Tonmechanismus, um die sonst nur begleitenden Stimmen obligater zu machen, sowohl in Sachen für einzelne Instrumente (z. B. in Klaviersonaten den Bass und späterhin auch die Mittelstimmen) als auch in Verbindungen mehrerer Instrumente z. B. in Sinfonien, Quartetten u. dgl.” Triest, “Bemerkungen über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” 399. 25 Triest, “Bemerkungen über die Ausbildung der Tonkunst in Deutschland im achtzehnten Jahrhundert,” 406–7. For more on period remarks on Haydn’s humor, see Bonds, “Haydn, Laurence Sterne, and the Origins of Musical Irony.” 153 it to sink into the mind of the listener. This weakness required short themes and frequent repetition as essential features of form for musical works.26 There was something imperfect about utilizing polyphonic forms for compositions, at least in terms of compositional creativity. Musical practice would require a different type of texture to flourish. Next came the “melodic” age, with Mozart its quintessence. Marx writes: [Handel] and Bach’s successors up to Haydn and Mozart could make use of a more substantial compositional form. A broader sentiment [and] superior grasp demanded and now established it, especially under the influence of Italian composers, lengthier musical thoughts, and a richer sequence of melodies. Sonata and rondo form became prevalent.27 In a footnote from an earlier article in the journal, Marx takes up the formation of the modern symphony and Beethoven’s role within it, wherein he describes the same shift as such: “With the tendency toward fuller sequences of melody, the fugue form finally had to retreat further. In its place there appeared a new form, not structured and conditioned by polyphony but by the flow of melody.”28 Marx, the celebrated theorist of Beethoven’s musical style and sonata form, initially conceptualized sonata form as a historical 26 “Empfindung und Fantasie waren in dieser Zeit noch nicht so gereift für die Auffassung musikalischer Ideen, dass sie in schneller Folge hätten wirksam dargestellt werden können. Es bedurfte noch langen verweilens bei einer Idee, um sie dem Gemüthe des Hörers einzusenken. Diese Schwäche bedingte die Form der Tonstücke in ihren Grundzügen: Kürze der Themata und öftere Wiederholung.” Marx, “Andeutung des Standpunktes der Zeitung,” 444–45. For an account of Marx’s conception of Ancient Greece, see Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848, 48–50. 27 “Seine und Bachs Nachfolger bis auf Haidn und Mozart durften sich einer inhaltreichern Kompositionsform bedienen; eine ansgebreitetere Empfindung, ausgebildetere Fassungsgabe forderten es und nun bildeten sich, vornehmlich unter dem Einflusse italischer Komponisten, ausgedehntere musikalische Gedanken und eine reichere Folge von Melodien: die Sonaten- u. Rondoform wurde herrschend.” Marx, “Andeutung des Standpunktes der Zeitung,” 445. 28 Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:61. “Bei der Neigung zu reicherer Melodienfolge musste endlich die Fugen-Form mehr zurücktreten. An ihre Stelle trat eine neue, nicht wie jene, aus der Mehrstimmigkeit, sondern aus dem Melodienflusse gebildete und bedingte Form.” Marx, “Etwas über die Symphonie und Beethovens Leistungen in diesem Fache,” 166. 154 achievement that signaled the end of the Baroque decades prior to the composer’s ascension.29 It signaled a new epoch, initially a repudiation of polyphony with a focus on melodic construction. For Marx, homophony’s dominance has led to the most recent age, whose exemplars are Beethoven, Spontini, Weber, and even Rossini.30 His description of the age is far more abstract than those of the earlier ones: Yet to what an extent has music since extended its territory! How its means of expression have enriched it—already as a result, its comprehension has become more common and [the means] could now be deployed in closer connection and more frequently! How ideas in newer works of art are grounded infinitely deeper and thereby more definite!31 As Sanna Pederson observes, Marx had an agenda in carving out a modern style. Alongside his discussion of new music was the claim that it demanded new criticism. As part of a new generation, Marx was attempting to overthrow the old guards of music criticism, epitomized by the AmZ, in order to place his new journal at the vanguard.32 Beyond Marx’s careerist aspirations, Patrick Wood Uribe also recognizes that the journal was also beholden to the publisher’s commercial interests.33 29 See Scott Burnham’s introduction in Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, 1–14. Elsewhere, yet intriguingly absent here, Marx would infamously deride what he saw as the overly-sensual pleasures of Rossini’s operas. See Pederson, “A. B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity.” A decade later R. G. Kiesewetter would famously declare the period to be the “age of Beethoven and Rossini,” foreshadowing Carl Dahlhaus’s nineteenth-century stylistic dichotomy between German art music and popular Italian opera. See Mathew and Benjamin Walton, The Invention of Beethoven and Rossini. 31 “Aber wie weit hat die Tonkunst seitdem ihr Gebiet erweitert! Wie haben sich ihre Ausdruckmittel bereichert—schon dadurch, dass ihr Verständniss geläufiger worden ist und sie nun in näherer Verbindung und zahlreicher angewendet werden können! Wie unendlich tiefere und dabei bestimmtere Ideen sind in neuern Kunstwerken niedergelegt!” Marx, “Andeutung des Standpunktes der Zeitung,” 447. 32 Pederson, “Enlightened and Romantic German Criticism, 1800–1850,” 67–79. 33 Uribe, “Exchanging Ideas in a Changing World: Adolph Bernhard Marx and the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1824.” 30 155 Marx nonetheless saw something different about the newest music: it seemed to hinge on an intensification of creativity—a striving for freedom. The initial imaginative germ of the melodic age had become the essential feature of the most recent music. A decade earlier, Amadeus Wendt already found this tendency in the music of Beethoven but was far less enthusiastic about it. He claimed: “Here now is the point from which musical art since Haydn and Mozart has at times progressed even further, and at times has gone astray into the realm of unrestrained willfulness.”34 For Kanne, texture was an important marker of the compositional freedom possisible in recent periods. In 1821 he authored a sprawling serialized essay analyzing each of Mozart’s works for solo piano. While it will be discussed in more detail in the next section, his frequent asides about texture help to deepen the periodizations of Marx and Triest. In his commentary on the first sonata he discusses, K. 279, Kanne has an intriguing discussion about a texture quite familiar to any pianist’s eye: a melody over an Alberti bass. He notes, “Mozart spins the thread of the melody in a line with the right hand as the form thus becomes more definite, while the left hand arpeggiates, and the alternating triads of sixteenth notes sound to this end.” Here Kanne responds to a criticism he has heard, namely, that Mozart’s counterpoint is unsatisfactory: “Is this not full enough? Is it not four-voiced? Should perhaps every middle voice sing? By no means everywhere! Perhaps occasionally, where the expression requires it. The melody is the shape enclosed by means of the bass as the second line, while the middle voices are the shadows, colors, and inks.” 34 Adapted from Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:198. “Hier ist nun der Punct, von welchem aus die Tonkunst seit Haydn und Mozart theils immer weiter fortgeschritten, theils in das Reich der ungezähmten Willkuhr sich verirrt hat.” Wendt, “Gedanken über die neuere Tonkunst, und van Beethovens Musik, namentlich dessen Fidelio,” 683–84. 156 His counterargument is quite bold. Alberti bass, a ubiquitous feature of Mozart and his contemporaries, has the potential to display a variety of textural qualities on the spectrum between homophony and polyphony. Kanne continues: In and of itself it would be foolish to claim that a sonata should always be fourvoiced, if one doesn’t exactly intend such an art work; instead the middle voices should only join in as with a painting where shadows or colors are required. As such, the phrase here adopts a new character through some twists, one first suggested perhaps deliberately in one or two voices before.35 Kanne’s Mozart uses counterpoint as a device, among many within the master’s toolbox, to be deployed in imaginative ways throughout the work. Embodied by Mozart here at the highest level, the modern style repudiated the traditional contrapuntal forms of music that appeared to be generated by a priori rules, rules from outside of the work. Only the particular character of the work dictated how the texture unfolded. In contrast, Bach’s fugues—as masterful as they were—were nonetheless bound to the traditions of the Baroque age. They appeared to be impressive demonstrations of mathematical principles, lacking the imaginative richness of contemporary works. Kanne claims: Bach, the great master of counterpoint, arouses a purely intellectual pleasure, that is, he delights the intellect far more, while Mozart primarily makes use of the imagination and the soul, but still knows to mix so much depth and spiritual aspects into his melodies and harmonies that the intellect becomes protracted and subsequently bound to this contemplation in beautiful unity. Mozart delights through organic construction, through the beautiful current that has the utmost 35 “Mozart spinnt den Faden der Melodie mit der Rechten in einer Linie fort, weil dadurch die Form entschiedener wird, indess die Linke arpeggirt, und die Dreyklänge im Wechsel der Sechszehntheile harmonisch dazu anklingen lässt. Ist diess nicht voll genug? Ist es nicht vierstimmig? Soll etwa jede Mittelstimme singen? Mit nichten überall! Wohl bisweilen, wo es der Ausdruck erfordert. Die Melodie ist der Contur, der durch den Bass als zweyte Linie geschlossen wird, die Mittelstimmen sind die Schatten, Farben, Tinten . . . An und für sich wäre es Thorheit zu fordern, dass eine Sonate immer vierstimmig gehen soll, wenn man nicht gerade ein solches Kunstwerk beabsichtigt; sondern die Mittelstimmen sollen nur so hinzutreten, wie bey einem Gemählde, wo der Schatten oder die Farbe erfordert wird, wo also hier die Periode durch eigene Biegungen einen neuen Charakter annimmt, den sie vielleicht absichtlich zuvor ein- oder zweystimmig erst andeutete.” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 24–25. 157 appearance of lightness and natural life. Its waves gently flow into each other with bliss and love, its appeals touch the heart, its melodies carry the imagination upon tender wings, while Bach renders all depth and splendidness, all mastery and elaborate interweaving more cold.36 Modern music relied on the work itself as the regulative force for the organization of its materials. In contrast to Bach, Mozart used advanced contrapuntal techniques in ways that bolstered the imaginative force of the work, techniques that seemed to ought to be there because they served a function within the work and not because of some exterior rule or convention.37 All of this prefigures D. F. Tovey, who some eighty years later would expand the historical claim and, seeing Haydn as the exemplar of modern music instead of Mozart, summarize it in his typically pithy style as such: “In Haydn's case the problem . . . was to make his form determine his texture; just as in Bach's case it would have been exactly the converse.”38 36 “Bach, der grosse Meister des Contrapunctes erweckt ein rein intellectuelles Vergnügen, d.h., er ergetzt den Verstand weit mehr, indess Mozart zuerst die Phantasie und das Gemüth in Anspruch nimmt, aber dennoch so viel Tiefe und geistreiche Beziehung seinen Melodien und Harmonien beyzumischen weiss, dass der Verstand zu dieser Beschauung in schöner Eintracht hingezogen, und daran gefesselt wird. Mozart entzückt durch den organischen Bau, durch den schönen Fluss, den den höchsten Anschein der Leichtigkeit und des natürlichen Lebens hat, seine Wellen fliessen sanft in Wonne und Liebe in einander, seine Anklänge rühren das Herz, seine Melodien tragen die Phantasie auf liebevollen Flügeln, indess Bach bey aller Tiefe und Trefflichkeit, bey aller Meisterschaft und kunstreichen Verwehung mehr kalt lässt.” Ibid., 236. 37 Kanne’s comments on the imaginative impoverishment of traditional counterpoint are not new. Decades earlier Forkel, in §108 of the introduction to his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, declared contrapuntal techniques merely gratifying for the intellect and untenable as an organizing force in modern composition. He states: “They must, therefore, be used in tonal language with caution, namely, so they will contribute only an intellectual pleasure to the expression of feeling, but will not have an effect only for their own sake.” Powers, “Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s Philosophy of Music in the ‘Einleitung’ to Volume One of His ‘Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik’ (1788): A Translation and Commentary with a Glossary of Eighteenth-Century Terms,” 131. 38 Tovey, “Haydn: Pianoforte Sonata in E Flat, No. 1,” 97. The quotation supports one of Tovey’s most ambitious claims, that Haydn singularly effected the shift from pre-modern to modern music, resulting in nothing short of music’s “Copernican turn” from the “architectural” Baroque style to the “dramatic” Sonata style. See my “Tovey’s Idealism.” 158 The periodizations tended to rely on a tripartite model: musical practice shifted from a rigid contrapuntal structure to a simpler style predominated by melody and periodicity, and finally progressed to the present age that welcomed the interplay of any and all textural profiles employed before it, akin to Hegel’s conception of the romantic artist. The early nineteenth-century critics faced some difficulty reaching a consensus for where to place Mozart and Haydn in the model, and as the century progressed both tended to appear more antiquated and less relevant: for Triest Haydn was a glorious consummation of modern composition while for Marx he is not even a part of the narrative. The model represents a departure from Hoffmann’s pre-modern/modern distinction, at least in terms of scope, as Hoffmann’s antiquity was idealized in the Renaissance while Triest and Marx reached to the fairly recent early eighteenth century. In contrast to Triest and Marx, Hoffmann places Bach in the modern world: “Bach’s music bears the same relationship to that of the early Italians as the cathedral in Strasbourg to St. Peter’s in Rome . . . I see in Bach’s eight-part motets the wonderfully bold, romantic structure of the cathedral rising proudly and gloriously into the air, with all its fantastic ornaments artfully blended into the whole.”39 Here Hoffmann adopts Goethe’s architectural distinction between St. Peter’s and Strasbourg cathedrals to represent the difference between ancient and modern, naive and sentimental, or classic and romantic.40 39 Hoffmann nonetheless found some of Bach’s contemporaries exemplary of the old church style. Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 104. “Da sagte mein geistreicher Freund: ‘Sebastian Bachs Musik verhält sich zu der Musik der alten Italiener ebenso, wie der Münster in Straßburg zu der Peterskirche in Rom.’ Wie tief hat mich das wahre, lebendige Bild ergriffen! — Ich sehe in Bachs achtstimmigen Motetten den kühnen, wundervollen romantischen Bau des Münsters mit all’ den fantastischen Verzierungen, die künstlich zum Ganzen verschlungen, stolz und prächtig in die Lüfte emporsteigen.” Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmanns Sämtliche Werke, 1:66. 40 See “On German Architecture” in Goethe, Essays on Art and Literature, 3–9. 159 Yet for Triest, Marx, and Kanne, Bach represented an antiquated, uncreative, and ultimately cold manner of composition. The music journal was not the only source where writers accounted for the proliferation textural possibilities in contemporary music. The issue surfaced in compositional treatises, particularly in discussions of the string quartet. While pedagogues generally avoided historical considerations for explaining textural diversity as Triest or Marx did, they nonetheless identified the topic in the contemporary musical practices they theorized. As Edward Klorman observes, writers often construed the textural possibilities of the quartet as a metaphorical conversation.41 The idea captivated H. C. Koch, who wrestled with which instrument in a quartet could be the “main voice” (“Hauptstimme”) while maintaining a truly galant, homophonic texture. Yet Koch also recognized that the other voices were not necessarily entirely subordinate, at least not at all times. Exemplary of this concern is his profound interest in “concerting,” defined as “voices of a composition that alternate carrying the melody with the given main voice, or that are heard with solo phrases between the phrases of the main voice, in order to compete, so to speak, either among themselves or with the main voice.”42 By introducing more complex textural entanglements among the four voices of the genre, the new style could lead to a veritable fight over the hierarchy of voices. 41 See especially chapter 2 of Klorman, Mozart’s Music of Friends: Social Interplay in the Chamber Works. 42 Ibid., 37. “Concertirend . . . nennet man diejenigen Stimmen eines Tonstückes, welche die Melodie mit der vorhandenen Hauptstimme abwechselnd vortragen, oder sich zwischen den Satzen der Hauptstimme mit Solosätzen hören lassen, um gleichsam unter sich selbst, oder mit der Hauptstimme, zu wettstreiten.” Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon, 355. 160 Such an observation was not limited to German discourse. In his 1804 treatise, Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition, Jérôme-Joseph de Momigny presents a detailed analysis of the first movement of Mozart’s String Quartet in D minor, K. 421. He assigns lyrics of an aria to the different string parts depending on their motivic and contrapuntal prominence from section to section, recognizing the overtly polyphonic sections as teeming with motivic imitation and diminution. This inspires him to break into full praise: “This is true skill. For all its merit, it is not coldly calculated, but has a somber and genuine expression that penetrates to the depths of the soul. This should be attributed equally to the rhythm, the movement, and the intonations of the passage.”43 He prefigures Kanne when he claims that Mozart deploys contrapuntal techniques in a meaningful, ultimately imaginative way rather than a “coldly calculated” one—all that is missing is a comparison to Bach. Music’s new tendency to exhibit a myriad of textural possibilities was a wellspring for the exhibition of freedom. The focus on texture as the defining trait separating musical epochs would endure. A century later, Adolf Sandberger and his contemporaries grouped Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven together and labeled the age as the Viennese classical period. To Sandberger, an essential characteristic of the period’s musical style was what he termed thematische Arbeit, “the child of the marriage between counterpoint and freedom,” which was exemplified in the string quartet. He continues: “In place of mere attractive juxtaposition of musical ideas, comes organic development of the motives. Thus the string quartet is at 43 Momigny, “From A Complete Course of Harmony and Composition,” 830. “C’est-là de la véritable science ; elle n’a pas, pour tout mérite, un froid calcul ; mais elle est d’une expression sombre et vraie qui pénètre jusqu’au fond de l’ame ; ce qu’on doit attribuer également au rhythme, au mouvement et aux intonations de ce passage.” Momigny, Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition, 2:392. 161 once homophonic and polyphonic.”44 Guido Adler a few decades later would embed this interplay between homophony and polyphony in his conceptualization of Viennese classicism as well, which he terms obligates Akkompagnement.45 And even Charles Rosen in his influential The Classical Style (1971) claims that the eponymous musical style emerges with Haydn’s Op. 33 set of string quartets due to the very fact that they demonstrate such a complex texture.46 A N A LY Z I N G F R E E D O M Critics turned to analysis to elucidate just what about a work was imaginative and how all of the work’s individual features coalesced into a masterful whole. While analysis was a messy affair, certain critics dove into the work unafraid. As one analyst put it after discussing general impressions of a recently published composition: “So much for the whole; now let us move on to the individual parts.”47 The struggle inherent in analysis, of 44 Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style, 341–59. Adler states, “The several instruments take part in the exposition of the principal theme and, at the same time, alternate in commenting upon it with motives of their own. In the latter event, their function with respect to the principal theme is to accompany, but this accompaniment must be in the nature of an obbligato. . . . The word ‘obbligato’ implies the right of each voice to go its own way (as in ‘real’ voice-leading) in so far as the exercise of this right contributes to the refinement of the accompaniment.” Adler, “Haydn and the Viennese Classical School,” 201–2. 46 Rosen specifically cites Adler and his obligates Akkompagnement as justification for this position in the preface to the 1971 volume’s revised edition from 1997, but the idea clearly guides his original narrative as well. Rosen, The Classical Style, p. xiii. For instance, when Rosen discusses the opening to Op. 33 No. 1 as the moment when the Classical style emerges, he writes: “This page represents a revolution in style. The relation between principal voice and accompanying voices is transformed before our eyes.” Expanding on the point, he writes, “This is the true invention of classical counterpoint. It does not in any way represent a revival of Baroque technique, where the ideal (never, of course, the reality) was equality and independence of the voices. . . . Classical counterpoint generally abandons even the pretense of equality. The opening page of this quartet, for example, affirms the distinction between melody and accompaniment. But it then transforms one into the other.” Ibid., 116–17. 47 “So viel vom Ganzen; jetzt sey es uns erlaubt, auf die einzelnen Theile überzugehen.” Anon., “Recension: Quintetto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement de deux Violons, Viole et 45 162 course, was that after critics fractured the work into its constituent parts, they had to stitch them back together again to show the work to be a coherent totality. While Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony offers an exemplary account of the issues captivating the elegiac moderns, his review of Louis Spohr’s First Symphony is far more illuminating for understanding early nineteenth-century analytical frameworks and concerns. In contrast to his famed Beethoven panegyric, Hoffmann’s tone is measured throughout, leading to compliments and condemnations as well as revealing explanations for his critiques. And while Spohr’s reputation has fared far worse than Beethoven’s over the past two centuries, Hoffmann’s serialized review implicitly acknowledges that the symphony was a work worthy of probing criticism. Hoffmann begins with a prefatory comment about the work’s character, recognizing the composer’s proclivity for “pleasant melodies” instead of “momentous utterances” in the style of Mozart and Beethoven. As such the symphony does not really generate the impressive fireworks of the hallowed composers. Yet this is not necessarily a weakness in itself. Hoffmann claims: “Despite its frequent striving for powerful expression, it generally keeps within the bounds of the calm dignity engendered by the chosen themes, which seems to suit the composer’s genius more than the turbulent flames that stream forth in Mozart’s and Beethoven’s symphonies.”48 Here lies the crux of Hoffmann’s approach to Violoncelle, composé et dédié à Monsieur Himmel, Maitre de Chapelle de Sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, par Louis Ferdinand, Prince de Prusse,” 458. 48 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 272. “Ungeachtet des Bestrebens nach dem starken, kräftigen Ausdruck, welches nicht selten hervorbricht, hält sie sich mehr in den Schranken des Charakters von ruhiger Würde, den schon die gewählten Themata in sich tragen und der dem Genius des Komponisten mehr zuzusagen scheint, als das wilde Feuer, welches in Mozartschen und Beethovenschen Symphonien wie ein Strom daherbraust.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 76. 163 critiquing and analyzing the symphony. As a modern work, Spohr’s symphony has an intangible character hovering over it, in this case a “calm dignity” that cannot be entirely disclosed with the material. But the structural features still need to support the character and disclose it incrementally, and Hoffmann’s approach is to recognize when the features either sustain the character or undermine it. Hoffmann also notes in his preamble that structural components threaten to unravel a work if they are too often used, if the composer relies on “the too frequent recurrence of certain favourite devices, such as chromatically descending bass, and the repetition of hackneyed chord progressions.”49 The Schillerian specter of convention loomed: if a technique in a work seemed overtly conventional, it failed to convince the listener or the critic of its necessity in the arrangement of the work without recourse to its conventional status—it simply did not belong. With this framework, Hoffmann sets himself up to pore over every feature of the symphony, determining whether each one fit into the totality with recourse to its character and decidedly not to convention. The symphony begins with a slow introduction, and Hoffmann recognizes two of its grounding motives. He takes a particular interest in a tonally wandering passage toward the end (see EX. 4.2): “The modulation leading from the dominant back to the dominant chord closing the Adagio makes a very striking effect.” Hoffmann is troubled by its apparently aimless purpose, however, claiming that it functions as a tonal bridge to nowhere: “The reviewer, though, would have avoided the first appearance of the dominant 49 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 272. “Das zu ofte Wiederkehren gewisser Lieblingsgänge, z. B. des chromatischen Herabsteigens des Basses; die Wiederholung verbrauchter Akkordenfolgen—wird der kenntnisreiche Verfasser leicht zu vermeiden wissen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 76. 164 b & b b œœ Œ 9 { Œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ bœ œ œ ˙ œœ bœœ nœœ œœ bœ ˙œ œ w b œ œ œ œ b œ œ œ œ™ œ œ œœ w œ ™ œ œ œœ ? bb ™ œœœœœ nœ œ b˙æ œ b œ œ f æ æ ˙ n˙ æ ˙ bœ ™ œœ bœ œ œœ œ bœ œœœbœ œ b œ̇ & b b b bœ œ œ ˙˙ 13 { pp ? bb ˙ b œ̇ œ nœ œ b˙œ nœ œ ˙ bœ œœ œ œnœ œ œ n˙bœ œ œ œ œœœ™ œ œ œœœœbœ œ œ™ œœœbœœœ f œ cresc. ˙ œ bœ œ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ bœ bw ˙ ˙ æ æ b ˙ œ œ œbnœ̇™ & b b œ ™ œ œbœ œ œ œ 17 { ? b b˙ bb ˙ æ ˙˙ æ b œ ™ œ œ œ bœ œ bœ œ œ œœœ œœœœ Œ bœ˙˙ Œ nœ œ œ fp æ fp œ œ œ b˙æ œ̇ ˙ æ æ œ™ œ œbœn œ œœ œ œ œbœ œ™ œ n œœœ bœ ™ œ œœœ bb œ™ œbœbœœ œœœœ ™ œ œ æ œ b w œbœœbn˙œ˙ nœ w nœœœœ & ˙ œœ Œ æ fp fp f æ ˙ æ œ™ œnœœœ ? b b˙ w ˙˙ œœ œ bb ˙ œ Œ æ æ 19 { . œ œ œ p . œ bœ w . . U U œ. ˙ Œ œ œ ˙ . . œ œ ˙ U ˙ Œ u Example 4.2: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 9–22 (reduction) in the ninth measure since it is disconcerting, after an excursion promising great things, to find oneself back at the point one had reached quite smoothly a few bars before.”50 To Hoffmann’s ears, the passage is not convincingly bound to the work because the dominant 50 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 273. “Die Modulation, welche aus der Dominante wieder in den Dominantenakkord führt, womit das Adagio schließt, ist frappant und von sehr guter Wirkung. Rez. hätte nur das frühere Anschlagen der Dominante im neunten Takte vermieden, indem es nicht wohltut, nach einer Ausweichung, die viel Bedeutungsvolles verkündet, sich wieder da zu finden, wo man schon vor wenigen Takten auf ganz ebenem Wege hingekommen war.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 77. 165 was already reached, and yet the dominant is where Spohr returns after such a bold harmonic digression.51 Only the work itself can grant the authority for a specific passage to seem necessary. At the start of the Allegro at mm. 23 ff., Hoffmann sifts through the details of the main theme’s presentation with the criterion that it must maintain the “calm dignity” of the movement’s character (see EX. 4.3). He finds some of Spohr’s compositional choices to clash with the character the composer conveyed through the whole work: “In the first three bars the reviewer would have had the double-basses not playing eighth notes but sustaining the tonic very softly with the horns, or resting until the fourth measure and then coming in on G. The quavers spoil the serene nobility of the theme.” To Hoffmann the double basses were at odds with the character by being so energetic, at least so early in the movement. He finds the subsequent orchestral buildup of the theme to a full-fledged tutti to be a common convention of the period, but also claims that Spohr convincingly incorporated the technique in his symphony: “This gradual entry of the wind instruments leading to a full tutti has often been used to great effect by the best masters, and by his use of it here the composer has demonstrated his skill in the device.”52 Hoffmann recognizes what follows at the beginning of the transition as “again gentle and sustained,” a feeling appropriate for the character of the movement as a whole, 51 There is a similar critique about the slow introduction of a symphony by J. B. Moralt, where the reviewer claims it establishes and then abandons the tonic too soon. See Anon., “Recension: Sinfonie à grand Orchestre, par J. B. Moralt,” 847. 52 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 274. “Rez. hätte in den ersten drei Takten die Kontrabässe nicht Achtel anschlagen, sondern pp den Grundton mit den Hörnern aushalten, oder bis zum vierten Takte schweigen, und dann mit dem G eintreten lassen. Jene Achtel schaden dem Ausdruck des ruhigen, edlen Charakters, der im Thema liegt. . . . Dieses aufeinander folgende Eintreten der Blasinstrumente bis zum vollen Tutti ist schon oft von den besten Meistern mit voller Wirkung benutzt worden, und der Komponist hat, so wie er es hier anbrachte, seine Kenntnis des Effekts bewiesen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 78. 166 Allegro b3 œ & b b4 œ œ œ nœ œ œ bœœ œ pp dolce ? bb 43 Œ œ˙™ œ œ #œ˙™œ œ œ b æ æ 23 { œ̇ œr bœ œ œœ œ œ ‰ œ. œ. œ. œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ ˙ ˙™ œ ˙™ ˙ æ œœ œj Œ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ™ Ÿ œ œ≈œ ≈ b œ œ œ œ & b b œ œ œ œ œœ ≈ œœ œœ œ œ ˙ ™ œ bnœœ œ œœ œ bnœœœnœ œ œ̇ nœbœ œbnœœ œœ Œ æ æ œœ ˙æ æ œ œ b ˙ æ ? bb œ ˙™ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œbœ œ œ œ Œ ˙ b œ œ 29 { œœœ T œ˙™ œ œ nœ œ æ ˙˙æ™™ æ Example 4.3: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 23–34 (reduction) as well as thematically linked to what immediately came before it: “the music consists merely of developments of the abbreviated main theme, interwoven with a variety of secondary ideas.”53 He points out that the first two measures of the main theme offer a plethora of possibilities for contrapuntal developments and provides the example of the sequence beginning the transition at m. 50, which leads with the motive in the bass and highlights the textural complexity of the music.54 After the presentation of the second theme, the music enters an extended sequence of root movements by fifths at mm. 108 ff. after an enharmonic shift (see EX. 4.4). Hoffmann finds the passage a bit strained: 53 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 275. “Bis zum zweiten, wieder sanft gehaltenen Thema in der Dominante besteht der Satz nur in Durchführungen des abgekürzten Hauptthema, mit mannigfachen Nebengedanken verwebt. Unter andern führt der Baß mit den beiden ersten Takten des Thema, die dem Rez. bei dem ersten Anblick gleich als geschickt zu mancherlei kontrapunktischen Umkehrungen erschienen.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 78–79. 54 Here Hoffmann has labeled things in a confounding manner, calling the passage that begins the transition “the second theme in the dominant.” The second group does not begin until m. 82 and, while this material might also be considered “gentle and sustained,” it incorporates a dotted rhythmic motive not yet heard in the Allegro. 167 The section is brought back to the dominant by eight successive seventh-chords. The reviewer will have occasion below to say why he dislikes this entire modulation proceeding from the enharmonic change; but the feeble and hackneyed return from foreign regions to home territory also completely obliterates the intended impression. It is a brilliant meteor that disintegrates in a watery fog.55 While Spohr has successfully avoided leaning on conventions thus far, here he has precisely brought out the conventional status of the convention employed, failing to blend the technique into the work. As each harmony progresses, the sequence draws attention to itself more and more as a standard compositional practice. A similar enharmonic change followed by the fifths sequence occurs in the development, and Hoffmann notes: The reviewer has already pointed out that the intended effect of the preceding enharmonic change is completely nullified by this sequential return over descending fifths in the bass. Even if that were not the case, the reviewer feels that one should be careful with strong spices. He would employ the most striking digressions, among which enharmonic ones are certainly to be included, only in the development section, before the recapitulation of the main subject; he would not want to be placed in the position of having to use them twice, as inevitably happens if they occur in the first half and therefore, according to the pattern dictated by convention and certainly by clarity, return in the second half in the tonic. It is difficult to use the same surprise twice.56 55 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 276. “Gleich darauf wird der Satz durch acht aufeinander folgende Septimenakkorde in die Dominante zurückgeführt. Rez. wird weiter unten Gelegenheit finden zu sagen, warum ihm diese ganz Modulation durch die enharmonische Verwechslung hier mißfällt; dann verwischt aber auch die bequeme, verbrauchte Weise der Rückkehr aus der fremden Sphäre in die bekannte Heimat ganz den beabsichtigten Eindruck. Es ist ein glänzendes Meteor, das sich in wäßrichten Nebel auflöst.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 80. 56 Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 277. “Darüber, daß durch dieses stufenweise Zurückgehen mit Unterquinten im Basse der beabsichtigte Effekt jener enharmonischen Verwechslung ganz verwischt wird, hat Rez. schon vorhin gesprochen, wäre dieses aber auch nicht, so ist Rez. der Meinung, daß man das starke Gewürz sparen müsse; er würde die frappantesten Ausweichungen, zu denen die enharmonischen in Wahrheit zu rechnen sind, doch erst in der weitern Ausführung des zweiten Teils vor dem Wiederkehren des Hauptsatzes anbringen, und zwar aus dem Grunde, um nicht in den Fall gesetzt zu werden, sie zweimal zu brachen, welches geschehen muß, sobald sie in dem Hauptsatz, der nach der gewöhnlichen und gewiß zur Klarheit zweckmäßigen Einrichtung im zeiten Teil in der Tonika verharrend wiederkehrt, vorkommen. Zweimal überrascht man schwer.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 81. Kanne also uses the spice metaphor to refer to harmonic adventurism in his Mozart Versuch. 168 b œ œ œ œ. œ. bœ œ œ. œ. œ bœ bœ œ nœ b . . #œ #œ #œ nœ #œ & b ˙™ . . # œ. n œ. ˙™ dim. æ ff nœ b ? b ˙æ™ #œ˙ ™ œ nœ œ. œ. œ. bb ˙™ #˙ ™ æ 105 { #œ#œ œ #œ n œ œ œnœ #œ #œ b #œ #œ œ #œnœ œ œnœ b nœ œ œnœ b # œ & b ˙™ #œ#œnœ nœ #œ . . . æ . . . . ? b #bœ˙ ™ nœ œ #œ œ œ #n˙œ ™ nœ œ b b # ˙™ J ‰ Œ æ 108 { b nœœ#œ œ#œ#nœœ œ œnœ œnœ nœ œ œ#œ &b b . . . ? b nn˙™ b b œ nœ œ ‰ Œ J # œ # œ œ œ œ #œ nœ#œ pp bœ n ˙œ˙ ™ ##˙ ™™ #œ #œ. . n˙ ™ æ œ. #œ #œ nœ œ. n œ # œ œ # œ n œ œ œ n œ #œ#œ nœ œ n nœœ nœ #œœ . nœ #˙ nœ œ œ Œ ‰ .J . . n œ #œ œ n œ œ œ œ nœ#œnœ œ œ n#œœ nœ #œœ . nœ # œ œ œ ‰̇ J . . Œ . œœ#œ œ nœnnœœ œ œ nœ nœ nœ œ œ œ nœ . . . n˙œ ™ œ œJ ‰ Œ . . . . . . . 114 ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b œœ œœ œœ œ #œ œ n œ b œ œ œnœ nœ œ b bœ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œnœ œ œ nœœ & b b # œœ œ n œ . . . œ œ . ? b nœ n œ œ œ b˙™ œ Œ bœ œœ nœ bœ œ bb Œ Œ b œ ‰̇ J œ œ œ . . . 111 { { Example 4.4: Spohr, Symphony No. 1 in E flat, Op. 20, mvt. 1, mm. 105–17 (reduction) In his most practical vein, Hoffmann claims that Spohr brings out the conventional nature of the enharmonic change followed by root sequence by fifths back to the prevailing tonic by repeating it, first in the repeat of the exposition and next in the development. Spohr, then, leans on harmonic adventurism in unimaginative ways. Hoffmann’s consideration of the symphony’s opening movement concludes with the criticism that Spohr ought to have developed the main theme by means of 169 counterpoint, resonating with the period understanding of texture as the strongest bearer of the human imagination and thus the push for polyphonic reworkings of prominent motives. Hoffman writes: “Without parading a lot of useless erudition, it is certainly good to shape the main subject of a work so that it can be treated to a multiplicity of contrapuntal treatments. Every composer knows how often a phrase which does not sound particularly original in its initial form takes on an entirely new and striking character in some inverted guise.”57 He mentions that Haydn is an early master of the technique, using motivic development to connect subsidiary melodic sections to the musical totality. Spohr’s present effort, in Hoffmann’s view, falls short of this impressive mark. Contemporaries of Hoffmann also recognized freedom (or its absence) in the music they analyzed in a variety of ways. A significant moment occurs in a review of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony. The unsigned 1807 review predates Hoffmann’s review of the Fifth Symphony and—unlike Hoffmann’s which was buried in the “Recensionen” section a few pages in and serialized over two issues—it was the week’s lead article, presented in its entirety without any breaks.58 Right from the start of the technical analysis, the reviewer speaks of the music as probing into its materials. For instance, at the famous C♯ moment 57 Adapted from Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, 277. “Ohne eine unnütze Gelehrsamkeit auskramen zu wollen, tut es gewiß gut, den Hauptsatz des Stücks so zu regeln, daß er sich auf mannigfache Weise kontrapunktisch behandeln läßt; denn wie oft ein Satz, der in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt nicht sonderlich originell klingt, in irgendeiner Umkehrung einen ganz neuen, auffallenden Charakter annimmt, weiß jeder Komponist.” Hoffmann, Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese, 82. 58 For context on the review, particularly as it relates to Rochlitz, see Geck and Schleuning, Geschrieben auf Bonaparte, 211–16. Robin Wallace speculatively attributes the authorship of the Eroica review, as well as the contemporary AmZ analytical reviews of Beethoven’s Third Concerto discussed below and the Eroica variations for solo piano, Op. 35, to none other than Kanne. See Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics, 17. For a discussion of the introduction of this review in relation to the nineteenth-century musical hermeneutics tradition, see Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, 2:14–19. 170 at mm. 7 ff., the reviewer claims: “The composer prepares the listener to be often agreeably deceived in the succession of harmonies.”59 What makes the music compelling as art is its distance from convention—the symphony first unfolds as a commentary on harmony. Besides the C♯ moment at the beginning, the other famous wrinkle in the movement that the reviewer calls attention to is the E-minor theme in the development, which directly follow the famous climax of the movement: those monumentally cataclysmic, thunderous pillars of harmonic dissonance.60 The reviewer notes: It is, for example, completely surprising, thoroughly new and beautiful when, in the course of the second half, where the working-out of the previous ideas begins to become almost too much, a completely new melody, not previously heard, is suddenly taken up by the wind instruments and treated episodically [mm. 284 ff.]. Not only are the sum total and variety of pleasing qualities thereby increased, but the listener is also refreshed enough to follow the composer gladly once again when he returns to the forsaken homeland, and clothes and develops the principal idea with even richer art.61 The critic recognizes that the established conventions of motivic development could now be tinkered with. He concedes that the second half begins as it often does, with the movement’s expositional bits being worked out, yet the music takes a perverse turn: the working out becomes too much. A new melody enters where the listener would not 59 Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:21. “Bereitet der Verf. den Zuhörer vor, oft in der Harmonieenfolge angenehm getäuscht zu warden.” Anon., “Recension: Sinfonia eroica,” 321. 60 For more on the reception of these moments, see Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 9. 61 Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:21. “Ganz überraschend, durchaus neu u. schön ist es z. B., dass im Verfolg dieses 2ten Theils, wo des Ausführens der frühern Ideen fast zu viel zu werden anfängt, plötzlich ein ganz neuer, noch nicht gehörter Gesang von den Blasinstrumenten aufgefasst und episodisch behandelt wird—wodurch denn nicht nur die Summe des Angenehmen und seine Mannichfaltigkeit vermehrt, sondern der Zuhörer auch erfrischt wird, dem Verf. Wieder gern zu folgen, wenn er zu der verlassenen Heimath zurückkehrt, und mit noch reicherer Kunst die Hauptgedanken einkleidet und durchführt.” Anon., “Recension: Sinfonia eroica,” 322. 171 necessarily expect, and on one level it is justifiable because it refreshes the listener’s taxed ears. On another level it lays bare the eroded state of musical convention, illustrating that the new style’s freedom established itself at a sentimental distance from compositional custom. Going back to the “forsaken homeland,” the music returns to the main motive and the critic relishes in Beethoven’s techniques here most of all: “The wind instruments perform the principal idea canonically, while the basses emphatically and splendidly move against it in short notes.”62 Here the reviewer recognizes the new style’s array of textural possibilities, where Beethoven deploys a contrapuntal device to show off the motive in different voices in an impressive virtuosic display. In another lengthy 1805 review of a Beethoven work, this time the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, the anonymous reviewer admires the development of the opening movement’s principal motive: “In a particular way, Beethoven inserted the few notes of the third measure through nearly the entire movement, often very unexpectedly, and thus converged, combined, and blended the most heterogeneous material. All the various places where this happened with great success cannot be cited here.”63 The 62 Senner and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2:22. “Wo die Blasinstrumente den Hauptgedanken kanonisch vortragen, die Bässe aber in kurzen Noten sich nachdrücklich und prächtig dagegen bewegen.” Anon., “Recension: Sinfonia eroica,” 322. 63 Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:206. “Besonders glücklich hat B. die wenigen Noten des dritten Takts fast durch den ganzen Satz, oft sehr unerwartet, angebracht, und dadurch das heterogenste einander genähert, zusammengehalten und verschmolzen. Alle die verschiedenen Stellen, wo das Letztere mit vielem Glück geschehen ist, können hier nicht angeführt werden: es mögen nur einige die Behandlung belegen, und die Art und Weise der Behandlung vor Augen stellen!” Anon., “Recension: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement . . . par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvre 37.,” 446– 48. 172 416 °? ¢ UU ‰j ‰ j ˙Ó œ œœ œ sf pp UU Ÿ˙ n œœ Ó b œœ Œ Ó p U ˙ n Un ˙˙ b œœœœ Œ Ó & Ó Timp. b &b b { ? bb b Str. ° bb U U & b ˙ Ó nw w sf ˙ pp ˙Ó w ? bb UU œ Œ Ó ¢ b sf 421 °? ¢ Œ œ œ ‰œj œ ‰œj œ Ó nœnœ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œnœ œ bœ œ œ nœ œ œœ œœ œ œ Œ Ó bœ œ œ œ œ n œœ nœ nœ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ w w nw œŒ Ó bww w Œ Ó ° bb & bn w w ?b w ¢ bb œ Œ Ó bww w w bn w w nw œ ‰œj œ ‰œj œ œ b œ œ œnœ œ œœ œœ œ b n œ bœ œ œ œ œ nœ Œ & b b œ Œ b œœœ Œ bnœœœœ b ? Œ Œ & œ bœ œ œnœ œ œœ œœ œ &b b œ Œ bœ œ œ œ œ n œ { Ó œ b œ œ œnœ œ œœ œœ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ nœœ Œ Ó pp œ ‰ œj œ ‰ œj œ Œ Œ Ó Œ œœ Œ œ nœnœ œbœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œœ Œ œ nœ nœ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œn œ œ w w nw œŒ Ó w bn w w nw æ bœœ œ œ Example 4.5: Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, mvt. 1, mm. 416–25 reviewer proceeds to “show” more than “tell” of the places where the motive returns, illustrating that its unifying function entails showcasing the imaginative possibilities of its developments into new guises. In particular he is struck by the moment after the cadenza ends and the orchestra returns, with the motive sounded by the timpani (see EX. 4.5): “After the cadenza Beethoven makes a deceptive cadence (inganno), moves from the 173 dominant-seventh chord to the second inversion of the major–minor seventh chord on C, and now lets the pianoforte continue to play solo until the final cadence.” To the critic, the moment when the harmony changes in m. 417—what we would now call an evaded cadence—is utterly shocking, yet not entirely rudderless, as the timpani part connects the moment to the rest of the movement by the thinnest of threads, through the motive, “those few but significant notes.”64 The critic not only appeals to motivic development to explain the logic of a work’s structure, but also to Beethoven’s use of key relations. Turning to the finale, the critic waxes about the harmonic craftsmanship of the opening rondo theme (see EX. 4.6): The very beginning of theme, where the chord is based on the dominant and is extended to the minor ninth, announces and indicates the real essence, and is very original. The withholding of the first full cadence in the tonic through thirty-two measures creates ever higher excitement and tension and captivates the listener irresistibly. Beethoven also creates a similar effect quite perfectly at those places, among others, where he again leads into the theme, and then, usually through the chromatic scale, leads up through one or more octaves to the minor seventh or ninth, but does not yet let the listener come to rest. Instead, he holds him in suspense until the very end of the theme.65 64 Adapted from Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:208. “Nach der Kadenz macht B. einen Trugschluss, (inganno) tritt vom Dominantenseptimenakkord in den Terzquartenakkord des kleinen Septimenakkords von c, und lässt nun das Pianoforte bis zum völligen Schluss noch fort konzertiren.” Anon., “Recension: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement . . . par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvre 37.,” 450. 65 Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:211. “Gleich der Anfang des Thema, wo der Akkord der Dominante zum Grunde liegt und in die kleine None geschritten wird, ist das Recht ankündigend und bezeichnend, und sehr originell. Die Aufhaltung des ersten völligen Schlusses in die Tonika durch zwey und dreyssig Takte reizt und spannet immer höher, und fesselt den Zuhörer unwiderstehlich. Ein Gleiches bewirkt B. ganz vollkommen, unter andern, auch in den Stellen, wo er wieder in das Thema einleitet, und dann gewöhnlich durch die chromatische Tonleiter eine oder mehrere Oktaven hindurch bis zur kleinen 7 oder 9 aufsteigt, den Zuhörer aber noch nicht zur Beruhigung kommen lässt, sondern ihn in Spannung erhält, bis das Thema völlig zu Ende ist.” Anon., “Recension: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement . . . par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvre 37.,” 454. 174 b 2 œJ œ nœ œ. œ. œ b & b4 Allegro { œ œ œnœ œ œΩ œΩ œΩ œΩ œ ™ œnœ œ#œ œ nœ œ. œ. œ sf œ œnœ œ sf ? bb 42 ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ . . œj œ . . œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œnœ œ J nœ œ œ œ œnœ œ nœ œ œ œ nœ Œ j j j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ?b #œ œ œ Œ œ Œ œ ‰ œJ b b bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj ‰ œ ‰ Œ œJ ‰ Œ œ J . b & b b œ bœ nœ. œ 7 { j œ Œ œ bb œ bœ n œ j Œ œJ nœ œ. œ. b & œ œ # œœœ œ 15 { œ ? bb œ b œj . . œnœœœ œ œ œ œ œ. œ. œj . . œœœœœ œ œœ≈œœ≈œœ≈œœ≈ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœ œ œœ œœ #œœ œ Œ nœ œ œ œ . œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ œ rit. œ ˙ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œnœ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ jU bb œnœ b ≈ nœ & 22 { cal. ? bb œ œ œnœ œ œ nœ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œnœ œ œ nœ œ œ #œ œ œ nœœœ U œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ& œ 27 œ œ ® œ œ ® œ œ ® œœ ® œœ ® œœ ® œ œ b œ œnœ œ œΩ œΩ nœΩ œΩ & b b nœ ≈œ œ œ J { œœœ œ œœ œ b œ ? &b b œœœœœœœ œœœœœœ œ œ œ œ n œ œ b œ œœ œ œ sf sf œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ Example 4.6: Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, mvt. 3, mm. 1–32 (reduction) Here the critic essentially recognizes the dominant prolongation of the theme and the dramatic effect that it produces. The evocative language represents the beginning of a shift in musical thought from the localized conception of key relations to more modern theories of prolongation. The former is exemplified a year prior in an 1804 review of a piano 175 quintet, Op. 1, by Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.66 The beginning of the work establishes its C minor tonic with some fairly conventional tonicizations—emphasizing both the dominant and the subdominant, each prepared by their respective secondary dominants—and a perfect cadence in the tonic is withheld until m. 23, after several meandering phrases as was the case in the introduction to the finale of the Beethoven piano concerto (see EX. 4.7). Ferdinand’s anonymous reviewer describes the musical events as such: “There is a series of modulations through more related and unrelated keys.” Rather than observe a tonic prolongation as the Beethoven reviewer did, the Ferdinand reviewer finds the succession of harmonies a bit baffling: “Although these modulations are not without effect by themselves, they would have surely been better if there was some more C minor first to allow the ear to become familiar enough with home, which could have served as the epicenter and point of comparison for such migrations.”67 Here the critic illustrates an older localized conception of tonality that would be all but supplanted by the late nineteenth century, while Beethoven’s critic points to the future with a largerscale conception that would culminate with the theories of Heinrich Schenker. Indeed, Beethoven’s critic reveals the beginning of a type of conception of tonality and “middleground” prolongation embraced in music-theoretical discourse today, leaving the listener on the dominant and “in suspense.” 66 A nobleman and soldier of the Napoleonic Wars, as well as an enterprising musician, Ferdinand was coincidentally the dedicatee of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. 67 “Es erfolgt eine Reihe von Modulationen durch mehrere verwandte und unverwandte Tonarten. Obgleich diese Modulationen an sich nicht ohne Wirkung sind, so wäre es wohl besser gewesen, erst noch Einiges in C moll zu geben, damit das Ohr und Gefühl mit dieser Tonart, als der Heimath, welche ja doch auch zum Mittel- und Vergleichungspunkt für Auswanderungen dienen muss—erst vertraut genug geworden wäre.” Anon., “Recension: Quintetto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement de deux Violons, Viole et Violoncelle, composé et dédié à Monsieur Himmel, Maitre de Chapelle de Sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, par Louis Ferdinand, Prince de Prusse,” 459. 176 œ ™™ œ™™ œœ ™™™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œnœ œœœœ œ œ Œ ‰ œ R œ nœ œ œ œ n œœ n œœ œ œ œ nœ œ rK R Œ Ó œ Allegro con fuoco b & b bc ˙˙˙˙ { ?bc˙ bb ˙ ˙˙ f b T™ &b b œ 5 { ˙ ? b ˙˙ bb p r r œ >œ œ œ œ >œ œr œ ˙ J ˙ ˙ Ó b œ & b b œ nœœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ œœ ™™ œ œ ™ œœ ? b œœ œ ™bœ œ nœ ™ œ b b œ ™bœ œ n œ ™ œ 10 { œ œœ n ˙˙ ™™ œ ˙˙ ™™ œ ˙˙ ™™ œœ nœ Œ œœ Œ Œ b˙ n˙˙ ˙ ˙ f b œ ™™ nœœœ ™™™™™™ b œ ™™ ˙ n œœ œ bœ œ œ Œ n˙œ œ nœ œ Œ Œ #œ œ œ œ r œ œœ œ œ R œ œœ œ œ œ nœœ ™™™ œ™ œ™ œœœœ œ bœ bœ œ bœ cresc. Ó œœ œœ œ œœnœ œ n œ œ RÔ œœ œ œ nœ œ RÔ Kr nœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ™ #œ ™ nnœœœ nnœœœ b œœ ™™ œœ œœ nœœ ™™ nœ n œ ™™ œ œ nnœœ ™™ bœœ bœœ œ™ œ™ œœ œœ œ bœ œ bœ bœ R f œ ≈ œbœ œR œ r bœ œ œ œ œ bœ œœ œœ œœ b œœ bœ œ œ œ œbœ œ œ bœ œ œ bœ œ œœ bbœœ nœ œ bœ œ œ bœ bœ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œnœ œnœ b b œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ &b b ‰ b œ b œ œ b œ œ R nœ œ nœ œ œ bœ bœ œ œ bœ œ œb œ œ œ œ œ œ mf dim. œ b œ œ œ œ œ nœ œbœ œ bœ œ œ p œ ?b Œ œ bb bœ œ 15 { > > > > œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ nœ œ #œ b œ & b b œ nœ œ œ œ œ (cresc.) œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœœ bœ bœœœ nœ œ #œ œ œ nœ nœ f ˙™ œ ?b w bb 18 { œ ™™ œ œ œœ œ œœœ œ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œœbœnœ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œnœ œ œnœœœœ & b b œœ œ#œœnœœœ ˙˙˙˙ œ™™ œR œ Œ‰ œœ p dim. f œ œ™ œ œ œœ ™™™™n œœ n œœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ™ œ œ ?b œ œ œ œ nœ œ Œ Œ R ŒÓ ˙ bb ˙˙ œ ˙ 21 { Example 4.7: Ferdinand, Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1, mvt. 1, mm. 1–35 (reduction) Beethoven’s critic goes on to claim that the composer plays with this effect throughout the movement, one most obvious during stark changes of key, and they 177 describe the frequently masterful returns to the tonic as “leading back extremely well to the abandoned path.”68 What strikes him is the tonality of the rondo’s central episode, particularly after the episode’s establishment of soothing A flat major gives way to unstable and evocative harmonic developments, all eventually leading back to the C-minor tonic at the return of the rondo theme.69 The reviewer states: The composer agreeably surprises both connoisseurs and amateurs by letting the theme of the finale be developed fugally, pianissimo, by the string instruments, and then, since he is leading back toward C minor, goes from the dominant G, instead of back to C, up a minor second, letting this A♭ be taken up by the pianoforte and struck alternately by the two hands, and moves through an enharmonic alteration, whereby A♭ becomes G♯, to E major. At the point where the modulation returns to C minor, Beethoven places the first three notes of the [rondo] theme into the accompaniment, and lets the pianoforte step in between with arpeggiated diminished-seventh chords, which, as the string instruments are moving forward quite faintly in eighth notes, creates a deep, strange impression.70 Complete with a reduction of the orchestra and piano parts, this passage faithfully describes the harmonic goings-on of a moment the critic feels compelled to unpack. The 68 Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:211. “Aber noch eigener, und vortrefflich wieder auf den verlassnen Weg einlenkend sind die Stellen.” Anon., “Recension: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement . . . par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvre 37.,” 454. 69 This structural arrangement is similar to that of the central episode of the rondo finale from Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53, where a stable theme group and key give way to a transitional and harmonically adventurous passage which (eventually) leads back to the rondo theme. Tovey fittingly labels the section as “Finding the Way Home,” a designation that suits the piano concerto passage under discussion as well. Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, 158. 70 Adapted from Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 1:211–12. “Am Schluss dieses Perioden in As dur überrascht der Komponist den Kenner, wie den Liebhaber, dadurch angenehm, dass er das Thema seines Finale’s von den Saiteninstrumenten pianissimo fugiren lässt, und dann, da er wieder nach c moll einleitet, von der Dominante G, statt nach C zu gehen, in die kleine Obersekunde as schreitet, dieses as dann von dem Pianoforte aufnehmen und abwechselnd in beyden Händen anschlagen lässt, und durch eine Verwechselung des Klanggeschlechts, wo aus dem as gis wird, nach E modulirt. Da, wo die Modulation wieder nach C moll geht, legt B. die ersten drey Noten des Thema in die Begleitung, und lässt das Pianoforte dazwischen durch den verminderten 7-Akkord arpeggirend eintreten, welches, da die Saiteninstrumente ganz schwach in Achteln fortgehn, einen tiefen, seltsamen Eindruck macht.” Anon., “Recension: Grand Concerto pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement . . . par Louis van Beethoven. Oeuvre 37.,” 455–56. 178 rondo theme motive holds the passage together, if only by a thread, as the passage seems to be headed back to the theme proper in the most imaginative and obfuscating of ways. KANNE’S MOZART All while celebrating imagination, the period’s most focused analytical writings on Mozart and Beethoven would continue to stress modern music as an internal response to prior musical practice, portraying it as cunningly distanced from convention. In 1821 Kanne published the most extensive analysis that the music journal medium had witnessed, his serialized treatise titled Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben (Analytical Essay on Mozart’s Piano Works, with Some Remarks on Performance) in the Wiener allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His study constitutes a review of the first six volumes of an 1818 published edition dedicated to the composer, Saemmtliche Werke für das Clavier mit und ohne Begleitung von W. A. Mozart, by the Viennese publisher S. A. Steiner & Comp. One of the primary differences between this sprawling serialized essay and analyses before it is that the works in question were not new—indeed, Mozart’s first sonatas date back to around 1774, or nearly half a century earlier. The edition marks a significant moment in the canonizing of Mozart’s works, and Kanne’s Versuch likewise mark a crucial moment for analysis: not only was it a way to critique recent musical works in the marketplace, it was also a way to engage with works of the past foundational to the burgeoning modern canon.71 Kanne dutifully goes through 71 For a discussion of the essay’s influence, see Schmidt, “Enleitung zu Friedrich August Kannes Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 320–21. The journal issue also provides a reprint of Kanne’s serialized essay in a convenient, continuous form. 179 all of Mozart’s works for solo piano in the edition and provides a commentary for each one, some more analytically involved than others. Yet for how major a critical accomplishment the article series is, it has consistently evaded musicological interest into the present, particularly in English-language scholarship. To be fair, Kanne treats each work individually, eschewing a consistent, systematic approach. He relies on an array of antiquated rhetorical terms and other metaphors in his discussions, frequently going on tangents in the process of elucidating a movement’s structure. At times he skips over movements altogether. Yet within the critical discourse of the early nineteenth century, Kanne’s Versuch broaches and develops important themes of analysis, expounding on the experimental aspect of Mozart’s stylistic components throughout his treatise. Kanne operates on the assumption that Mozart, as a modern composer, plays with music’s materials at a sentimental distance and that the work itself grants authority to each material’s necessity. He begins his first analysis with a few observations that are the key to unlocking his analytical framework for the entire serialized review. On the first beat of the first measure of Mozart’s Sonata No. 1 in C, K. 279, he finds something essential to Mozart and, by extension, to music’s modern style: “Mozart practically begins in an oration style of short clauses [oratione commatica], since he places a chord underneath the first quarter note, bestowing it with such a bass accompaniment as is customary for the end of a musical work.” Kanne’s reading might seem a bit overwrought—after all, plenty of works begin with a root-position fully-voiced tonic chord (see EX. 4.8). Why should Mozart’s move constitute a turning away from convention? Kanne notices something important about the sixteenth-note bass flourish underneath the chord, a figure he claims 180 œ œ œ œ Ÿ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ ‰ œœœœœœœœ œ f œœœ j ? #c œ œ œ œ œj ‰ Ó œ Œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ‰ Ó œ # & c œœœ ∏∏∏∏∏ ∏∏∏∏∏ { ∏∏∏∏∏∏ Allegro Example 4.8: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 1 in C, K. 279, mvt. 1, mm. 1–3 is a typical concluding gesture. With a creative literary flourish, he continues: “This is the miniscule cornerstone onto which he builds his lovely structure. Whoever would set this beginning to poetry, like the ingenious Apel (deceased) had done with some of Mozart’s works, ought to make it like this: Indeed, a sweet charm dwells there / In the lovely play of tones!”72 Right from the start, then, Mozart “plays” around with conventions in the arrangement of his materials.73 The recognition that Mozart begins a sonata with a closing gesture reveals the plasticity of his style, a feature often remarked in scholarship well into the present. A locus classicus is the beginning of the trio in the minuet of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, K. 551, consisting of a parallel period whose phrases begin with a V–I cadential motion in the first two measures (see EX. 4.9). Leonard Ratner refers to the style as ars combinatoria which he describes as “the interchangeability of melodic components” while Wye Jamison 72 “Beynahe in oratione commatica beginnt Mozart, denn er legt einen Accord auf das erste Viertel, und gibt ihm eine solche Bassbegleitung, wie man oft den letzten eines Tonstückes zu geben pflegt . . . Diess ist der unbedeutende Grundstein, auf welchen er sein liebliches Gebilde baut. Wer diesen Anfang so in Poesie setzen wollte, wie der geistreiche Apel (weiland) mit einigen Mozartischen Werken gethan, müsste es so geben: Ja, es wohnt ein süsser Reitz / Im holden Spiel der Töne!” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 19. Kanne’s reference is to Apel’s poetic “translation” of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat, K. 543. See Apel, “Musik und Poesie.” 73 In the next paragraph Kanne uses “Spiel” to refer to the interaction between the pianist’s hands. For a genealogy of keyboards and their ludic function, see Moseley, “Digital Analogies: The Keyboard as Field of Musical Play.” 181 3 & 4 ™™ ˙ ™ { ˙˙ ™™ ? 43 ™™ ˙™ p œ œ #œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙™ . . œ . œ œ Œ Œ Œ ˙˙ ™™ œœ . œ. œ œ Œ Œ ˙™ Œ Œ Œ œ œ œ. œ Œ œ Œ œœ œ œ #œ œ nœ œ œ . œ œ œ œ ™™ Œ Œ Œ . Œ œœ œœœ Œ Œ ™™ œ. Example 4.9: Mozart, Symphony No. 41 in C, K. 551, mvt 3, trio, mm. 1–8 (reduction) Allanbrook refers to the fluidity of gestures as “a fungible musical currency.” Allanbrook furthermore claims that the age of Mozart was “a period when composition was gradually becoming the intelligent manipulation of conventions.”74 That conventions were “manipulated” bespoke of the loss of their power as smoothly-operating customs, and the contemporary analytical subdiscipline of topic theory predicates itself on the idea promoted by Kanne and his contemporaries, namely, that the modern style was inherently experimental, far removed from conventions of yore. Mozart could begin a piece with a closing gesture because wholesale appropriation of the old conventions was no longer enough. Art works were required to express an excess of creativity in their forms, a task that the old conventions simply could not fulfill. Yet Kanne does not treat all musical techniques as experimental fodder for the composer. In a noteworthy passage on the beginning of Piano Sonata No. 7 in C, K. 309, he emerges at his most conservatively pedantic. Mozart begins the piece with a sevenmeasure period, a feature Kanne finds problematic (see EX. 4.10). He proceeds to supply a fixed eight-measure version of the period, and takes pains to assure the reader that he is not being presumptuous, claiming, “Mozart has probably overlooked this unrhythmic 74 Allanbrook, The Secular Commedia, 101–2. Also see Ratner, “Ars Combinatoria: Chance and Choice in Eighteenth-Century Music.” 182 œ™ œ œ œ Œ œΩ œΩ œ™ œ œ œ Œ & p Allegro con spirito &c œ ˙ { ?c œœ ˙ f ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ & #œ 6 { ? & w w 12 & { r nœ œΩ œΩ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ Œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œΩ œΩ Œ œ r œ œΩ œΩ Œ œœ œ œ œ œ# œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ œœ œ™ œ œ œ Œ œœ Œ œΩ œΩ Œ œ r œ œΩ œΩ ‰#œ œ œ p ˙ ˙ ˙ œ™ œ œ œ Œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ b˙˙ f œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ Œ ? œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ f œ œ ‰ œ œ #œ ™ œ œ œ ‰ œJ œ™ œ œ Œ & œ œ œ œ œ œ b˙˙ nœ œ r œ nœ œ ˙ nœ œ ˙ œœ œœ˙ œœ˙ œœ Example 4.10: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 7 in C, K. 309, mvt. 1, mm. 1–16 place at the beginning and could not correct it later because the printer had already copied it.”75 A seven-measure period was oddly unintelligible as an experimental aspect of Kanne’s Mozart, and so the composer’s richly imaginative constructions also contained imperfections. As commentators have recognized, Kanne employs rhetorical terms throughout the article series and his analyses rely heavily them. While it seems antiquated in Kanne’s moment to conceptualize musical structure using the precepts of classical oration, he does not use them to impose a prescriptive structure onto a given sonata. Unlike the critics of the Figurenlehre (see chapter 1), Kanne never binds Mozart to the classical oration structure, i.e. from exordium to narration (narratio) to division (propositio) to proof 75 “Mozart hat diese unrhytmische Stelle anfangs wahrscheinlich übersehen, und konnte später nicht daran corrigiren, denn der Druck hatte es schon vervielfältigt.” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 147. 183 (confirmatio) to refutation (confutatio) to peroration (peroratio).76 After all such an a priori structure was just a needless restriction for the new, free style. He nonetheless finds a few parallels: “As in a well-ordered speech where a subject should be illuminated or a truth argued, the beginning represented quite simply without varied relationships, so too in the sonata.” Here lays a vestige of the Hauptsatz, yet with less regulatory power. Besides presenting a similarly uncomplicated beginning, Kanne claims, music is altogether a different medium, being so ephemeral that it requires repetition to hold in the listener’s mind, thus the need for the recapitulation. As he states, “The notes float away in their successive nature, without capturing precise concepts like in oratory.”77 Because music was not like oratory—an evanescent medium, barely representational at all—it required its own principles to establish its form. Kanne uses rhetorical terms primarily to make sense of Mozart’s phrase structure. After his critique of the introductory “unrhythmic” seven-measure period of K. 309, he proceeds to explore how the rest of the first group is constructed. He utilizes the term paranomasia (reinforcement) to highlight points at which material is repeated with slight alterations and embellishments. Kanne observes: “Thus the sonata begins with an emotive main idea that he imprints on the mind once more through the repetition of the initial aforementioned seven measures. But, like a good orator, he adds paranomasia to this repetition, that is, a reinforcement of the expression, and indeed it is apparent on the third 76 For a discussion of the traditional structure of oration, see Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 171–74. 77 “Wie in einer wohlgeordneten Rede ein Gegenstand beleuchtet oder eine Wahrheit erörtert werden soll, die Anfangs ganz einfach ohne mannigfaltige Beziehungen dargestellt wird, eben so auch in der Sonate. . . . die Töne in ihrer successiven Natur dahin schweben, ohne bestimmte Begriffe anzuregen, wie die Redekunst.” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 26–27. 184 and fourth beat of the eleventh measure and all of the twelfth.” Things get a bit more interesting when he recognizes dubitatio: “[Mozart] raises some doubts against this in thirteenth measure in order to carry out the close of the Hauptsatz in an altogether stronger manner.”78 Here Kanne’s Hauptsatz consists of the entire first group of the sonata, up until m. 21, a far lengthier passage than Forkel or Vogler ever conceived of. Rather than see the passage as a given bank of originating musical material, Kanne fashions it as a selfstanding fragment with its own internal cohesion: the period’s repetition belongs because Mozart incorporates some interesting changes, and the strong conclusion of the first group belongs because it functions as a convincing momentary repose, or dubitation, at mm. 13– 14. Kanne dutifully traces Mozart’s phrase structure in his discussion of Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330, complete with a detailed unpacking of the opening movement’s exposition. He claims that Mozart has created a compelling structure by means of the “art of dissection” (Zergliederungskunst) to weave a variegated tapestry. Mozart utilizes many “synonymous periods” (synonyme Periode), meaning that he writes sequences with very similar material. According to Kanne, such phrases are embellished largely through paranomasia, as one usually appears in its reappearance with a new seasoning or amplification of its shape, whereby the soul indeed must assimilate the same sentiments again, albeit in a different respect, with the addition of different yet analogous feelings. Here the individualization of the sentiments is thus treated with particular virtuosity.79 78 “Er beginnt also seine Sonate mit einem pathetischen Hauptgedanken, den er durch die Wiederhohlung nach den ersten erwähnten sieben Tacten dem Gemüthe noch ein Mahl einprägt. Aber wie ein guter Redner fügt er dierser Wiederhohlung die Paranomasie, d.h. die Verstärkung des Ausdrucks bey, und zwar ist dieselbe im dritten und vierten Viertel des eilften Tactes, und im ganzen zwölften sichtbar. Er erhebt einige Zweifel selbst dagegen, im dreyzehnten Tacte, um auf eine desto stärkere Weise alsdann den Schluss seines Hauptsatzes auszuführen.” Ibid., 147. 79 “Die oben erwähnten synonymen Perioden in dieser Sonate sind aber grössten Theils noch durch die Paronomasie verschönert, denn es zeigt sich beyder Wiederkehr gewöhnlich eine neue Würze oder Verstärkung in der Figur, wodurch die Seele zwardieselbe Empfindung wieder in sich 185 For Kanne the rhetorical term paranomasia does the work here to justify why Mozart’s phrase structure operates so smoothly. Meaning a pun or a play on words, it points to repeated thematic material, such as the basic idea from mm. 1–2 in mm. 3–4, or the sentence’s continuation in mm. 5–8 with its subsequent repetition in mm. 9–12 (see EX. 4.11). The repetitions serve slightly different functions than their original presentations, as Kanne points out when he claims they represent sentiments in different guises. Each is masterfully arranged, with its inclusion warranted by its relation to what preceded it. Allegro moderato Ω 2 œ œ™ &4 { œ œœ œ œ œ Ÿœ™ f œ œ œj ‰ œΩ œΩ œ™ œ œœ œ œ œ Ÿœ™ œ œ œj ‰ . œ. œΩ œ . œ. œ J ‰ p 2 &4 œœœœœœ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœœœ œ œ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ simile Ω . œ. œJ œ . ‰ & œ. œ 6 { & œœœœœœœœ ? j j œ œ Ÿœ œ œ ‰ œ œœ œ œ #œ œ Œ œœ œ ‰ œ œ r œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œ œœœœ œœ œ œ œœœœ f œœ œœ œœ œœ p œ œ œ œ œœœœ œ™ œ œ œ. œ. œ . . œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ® œ œœœ ® ® ® & œœœ f p f œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ. œ. œœ. œ œœ. œ œ œ œ œ œ ? Œ Œ 11 { Example 4.11: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330, mvt. 1, mm. 1–14 aufnehmen muss, aber in einer anderen Beziehung, mit dem Zusatze verschiedener, und dennoch analoger Gefühle. Die lndividualisirung der Empfindungen ist hier also mit besonderer Virtuosität behandelt.” Ibid., 193–94. 186 Kanne recognizes that the second group (“Mittelsatz”) of the opening movement of K. 330 begins in a very similar manner as the introduction, that is, phrases and basic ideas are repeated with subtle variations. A parallel period at mm. 19 ff. elides into a sentence with new material at m. 26. Of interest to Kanne is what happens after the sentence ends, with the emergence of a new parallel period at mm. 35 ff. He excerpts its antecedent phrase, claiming that Mozart has brought about dubitation (“einige Zweifel”). Utilizing the parallel antecedent and consequent periodic structure once more, Mozart does something quite imaginative: “[Mozart] establishes the same yet again in unison [in the consequent], but per suspensionen since he lengthens it, and makes his question weightier with the thrusted octaves, until he happily gives the resolution, and now his lush imagination permits reveling in lovely, affirming phrases.”80 Mozart’s consequent phrase incorporates a dramatic flair with octaves and, at m. 40, an augmentation of the rhythm with a crescendo and staccato markings which Kanne sees as ratcheting up the stakes (see EX. 4.12). Kanne finds the cadence at m. 42 to be one of structural importance, and an analyst of today would be hard-pressed to disagree—it could convincingly be labeled the all-important essential expositional closure (EEC) of modern Sonata Theory, and the “affirming phrases” that follow the in the closing group (C-space). At times Kanne’s sensitive retracing of Mozart’s phrase structure differs from our contemporary perspective, for modern music-theoretical terms are not available to him and he instead relies on evocative narration—a method that would become popular in 80 “Führt aber dieselbe noch ein Mahl im Unisono, aber per suspensionen ein, denn er verlängert ihn, und macht seine Frage durch die gestossenen Achtel noch wichtiger, bis er freudig die Auflösung gibt, und nun in lieblichen, bekräftigenden Perioden seine üppige Phantasie schwelgen lässt.” Ibid., 194. 187 p Ω . . ... . . œ. . . . Ÿ Ω . œ œ œ . Ω # œ # œ # œ œ œ œ œ. œ. œ œ#œnœ ≈ œ œ œ#œ œ™ œnœnœ. œ. œ ™œ Ω œ ™œ œ j œ. . œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & œ ‰ œœ œ™ œœœœ œ º . . sf p ... . p œ œ sf œ œ œ œ ? Œ ‰ #œ ‰ œ ‰ #œœ œ #œ ∑ œ J <#> 34 { sf p . . . . œ œ œ™ œ™ œ œr œ j ® œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œΩ ® œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ # œ œ # œ & œ #œ œ œ # œ œ #œ œ œ . . . . f œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œ œ ? cresc. œ œ J 40 { œΩ œΩ œœœ J Example 4.12: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 10 in C, K. 330, mvt. 1, mm. 34–44 program notes later on in the century—to present his analysis.81 His discussion of Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, K. 333, uses a broad metaphor to describe the second group of the opening movement. Ever with an ear toward texture, Kanne hears the section as a dance between a man and a woman, or between the descant and the bass: “Here is so to speak a tender entwinement of two beautiful shapes that draw near each other with lovely grace, and where the masculine part, the bass, supports and graciously bears the graceful movements of the feminine soprano melody on his arms, with all tenderness and yet with pleasing strength.”82 His subsequent discussion of the second group only obliquely mentions few moments on the score, yet his narration mirrors that of K. 330 by 81 See, for instance, Bashford, “Not Just ‘G.’: Towards a History of the Programme Note.” “Hier ist gleichsam ein liebevolles Umschlingen zweyer schönen Gestalten sichtbar, die sich in holder Anmuth einander nähern, und wo der männliche Theil, der Bass, die graziösen Bewegungen des weiblichen, der Sopranmelodie, mit aller Zartheit, und dennoch mit anziehender Stärke unterstützt und auf seinen Armen huldvoll dahinträgt.” Kanne, “Versuch einer Analyse der Mozartischen Clavierwerke, mit einigen Bemerkungen über den Vortrag derselben,” 210. 82 188 highlighting the expectation and fulfillment of periodic constructions as well as the dramatic building of tension (see EX. 4.13). Again, the “play” metaphor surfaces: The different turns of the two, the fruit of the pure yet blissful convergence of their souls brings with it the intimate play of gestures and the eloquence of their glances. So they stroll, sensing their affinity, soon approaching each other with the same feelings, again through tender reserve driven back inward into themselves, and concealing the desire for a lovely reunion until the bold courage of the man (the bass) finally succeeds in resolving the doubt and in accomplishing the intertwinement of the two souls in delightful harmony. This spiritual contract is suggested by the passage that leads to the first major cadence, customarily in the composer’s whispering tones. Only now, from this point forward, does the soulful intimacy, the union, develop expressions of delight about the joyful convergence and the suggestion of [the two’s] affinity in the second group, which as a result customarily takes on a wholly graceful, joyous character as well. Here the melodies are more delicate and florid, already entwined with a loving submission, delayed through delicate games of jest, refusal, and apparent convergence. The poetic musician has the two still fleeing that union, or theme, through their affection and sees them in a charming struggle—until finally the fortitude defeats the attraction, or the attraction the fortitude—and now both converge and embrace, drifting in a beautiful, supple union, performing their achieved harmony with triumphant joy.83 While Kanne’s poetic summary of the second group of K. 333 is general enough to correspond to many different second groups, it shares some of the ideas conveyed in his 83 “Die verschiedenen Wendungen beyder, die Frucht der keuschen und doch seligen Annäherung ihrer Seelen bringt mit sich das innige Spiel der Geberden und die Beredsamkeit ihrer Blicke. Sie wandeln daher, ihre Geisterverwandtschaft ahnend, bald sich mit gleichen Gefühlen entgegenkommend, durch zarte Scheu wieder in ihr Inneres zurückgedrängt, und die Sehnsucht zu wonniger Vereinigung verbergend, bis dem kühnen Muthe des Mannes (der Bass) es endlich gelingt, die Zweifel zu lösen, und die Verschlingung zweyer Seelen in wonnevoller Eintracht zu bewerkstelligen. Diesen Geistervertrag lässt der Tonkünstler seine in Töne gehauchten Gestalten gewöhnlich auf dem Übergange zur ersten Haupt-Cadenz schliessen; denn von da an entfaltet nun erst die seelenvolle Innigkeit und Einigkeit die Ausdrücke des Entzückens über die freudige Annäherung und Ahnung ihrer Verwandtschaft in dem Mittelsatze, welcher desshalb auch gewöhnlich ganz den Charakter des Graziösen, Wonnevollen annimmt. Die Melodien sind hier zarter und blühender, und umschlingen sich schon mehr mit liebevoller Ergebung, die durch zarte Spiele des Scherzes, der Weigerung, der scheinbaren Annäherung so verzögert wird, dass der poetische Musiker die zwey durch Liebe vereinigten Wesen oder Themata's immer noch sich fliehen, und in einem reitzenden Kampfe begriffen sieht, bis endlich die Stärke den Reitz, oder der Reitz die Stärke besiegt, und beyde durchdrungen und umschlungen nun dahin schweben in schöner schmiegsamer Vereinigung, und ihre bewirkte Harmonie in triumphirender Wonne kund thun.” Ibid., 210–11. 189 bœ b œœ™™ œœœ ™ œnœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ bœ œΩ œ œ œ #œr œ ™ nœ#œ œ œ œ œ œ nœœ nœœœœnœœœœœœœœœœœœ œœ b œ & œ œ œœ n œœ œ . œ. œ. œ œ J œ œΩ œΩ ˙ œ n œœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ ?b œ Ó Œ ‰ œ Œ œ b œ œΩ ˙ œ 31 { œ œ . . œ œ . . œ. œ. œ. œ. n œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ b œnœ œœ œ œ œ Ÿ Œ Ó b ™ & nœœ œœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ fp œ œ œ œ œ œ œfp œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #fœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ? bb œ nœ œ nœ œ œ 37 { fp b &b 41 { bœ œ . . œ œ . . nœ œ œ œ f fp . . œ. œ. œ œ n œ œ œ œ ˙ ˙ b˙ b˙ n˙ n˙ ˙ ˙ fp fp f p œ œ ? bb nœ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ ‰ œ nœ œ ‰ # œ nœ œ ‰ œ & fp fp œ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ b & 45 { b &b Œ œ bœ œ̇ œ f œ œ ‰ nœ ‰ bœ œ œ ‰ œ ˙˙ ˙˙ b & b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œº œ œ œ œ œ œ º j ‰ n œ b œ œj ‰ n œ b œ œ ? bb œ ‰ Œ œ ‰ Œ J J 50 { œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ nœœ œ . . nœ ?bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b b &b 53 { b &b 56 { œnœ œ œ ? bb œ œ ˙ ˙ ? #˙ p œ œΩ ‰ ˙˙ œ œ œΩ ‰ œ n˙˙˙ œ œΩ ‰ n˙˙ œ œ œΩ #œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ bœ Œ nœœ œ̇ œ œ œ œ œ œ œbœ œ#œ œ nœ œº œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œbœ œ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ j œ ‰ nœ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ Œ Œ Œ J nœ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œΩ j œ œ œj œ n œ b œ œ œ œ œœj ‰ n œ b œ œœ ‰ n œ b œ œ œ ‰ Œ Œ Œ J J J œ œ œ œœœ œ œœœœœœœœœœ Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ nœ œ œ j œ œœœ w œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ œ Example 4.13: Mozart, Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat, K. 333, mvt. 1, mm. 31–59 190 more technical discussion of the phrase structure of the opening movement’s exposition of K. 330. While the narrative refers to the interaction between the bass and the descant, or the dance of a man and a woman, it reveals his conceptual apparatus for understanding the dramatic action of a sonata exposition. The second group is the story of how two souls find love and combine as one, with their union occurring at the first major cadence, corresponding to the EEC. Naturally the bass leads the dance here to effect a perfect authentic cadence with a definitive gesture from the dominant scale degree to the tonic. The composer can artfully delay this unification in a number of ways, like in “jest,” “refusal,” and an “apparent convergence” presumably undercut by a subsequent digression or cadential evasion. Almost two centuries later, James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy write: “Whenever one hears the onset of S-space within any exposition, one should listen with an alert sense of anticipation for any subsequent PAC—how it might be thwarted, or deferred. One should experience any sonata form with a strongly ‘directed’ preparatory set, pressing forward conceptually and anticipating genre-defining events-to-come.”84 Kanne’s understanding of the games involved with delaying the first major cadence of the exposition prefigures the predominant narrative of a sonata form exposition today. M A R X ’ S B E E T H OV E N As Kanne waxed lyrical about Mozart’s style, Marx sought to bury it. Widely known for his theorization and codification of musical form from the 1830s onward, particularly centered around Beethoven’s works, Marx’s early journalistic writings reveal his ideas to 84 Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth Century Sonata, 18. 191 be in dialogue with other critics of the day in the service of celebrating Beethoven’s distance from convention.85 For instance, Marx provides an interesting counterpoint to Kanne’s account of Mozart’s phrase structure. In his 1824 review of Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1, he includes a lengthy and instructive aside on the stylistic differences between the music of Mozart and Beethoven. The former’s style appears as an archaic ideal, containing musical structures that seem so symmetrically balanced to the point of being predictable. Marx writes: What belongs [to Mozart’s style] is . . . the correspondence (and repetition) of individual ideas, always situated as an antecedent phrase and a consequent one. Listeners can thus already guess the consequent phrase by themselves once the antecedent phrase is stated. In Mozart’s case, the consequent phrase almost always follows in a straightforward manner. This straightforward procedure—so well justified through his pleasant ideas—certainly earned him such general acclaim, even from amateurs, who love it when all that is pretty remains in its proper place.86 Marx initially characterizes Mozart’s style as harmonious, yet the conclusion resorts to a backhanded compliment: the music is pretty and predictable so that anyone can like it, dividing amateurs from true connoisseurs. Later on in his influential treatise, Die Lehre von der musikalische Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch (1837–47), Marx would claim that for such parallel phrase pairings: “The idea is so securely and satisfactorily closed through the balanced formation . . . that there remains within it no impulse at all for 85 For representative writings, see Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven. “Hierhin gehört . . . das Korrespondiren (auch Wiederholen) einzelner Gedanken, welches immer wie ein Vordersatz und Nachsatz dasteht, so dass der Hörer, wenn der Vordersatz vorgetragen ist, den Nachsatz schon von selbst errathen kann, welcher Nachsatz denn auch bei Mozart fast jedesmal ehrlich erfolgt. Dieses ehrliche Verfahren, welches durch seine liebenswürdigen Gedanken so sehr gerechtfertigkeit wird, hat ihm sicherlich auch den so allgemeinen Beifall, auch den der Laien, erworben, die es so gern mögen, wenn alles hübsch im Geleise bleibt.” Marx, “Recension: Quatuor pour le Piano-Forte, avec accompagnement de Violon, Alto et Violoncelle, composé etc. par Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Oeuvr. 1,” 168–69. 86 192 further progress.”87 Even by the 1820s, though, Marx finds Mozart’s style ultimately antiquated, uncreative, static, and presenting no challenge to the listener. By contrast Beethoven deploys phrase structures in a more imaginative way, and in Marx’s narrative, he emerges as nothing short of the exemplar of compositional progress: Beethoven famously does not cherish this periodic correspondence and recurrence (especially in his new creations), which undeniably fits his style better. Either he knows to resolve the consequent phrase differently than the listener expected, or (more often) he develops his phrase so that it requires no consequent—instead it flows forth freely and unhindered.88 Marx’s gesture is significant: he classicizes Mozart and romanticizes Beethoven, placing a sharp divide between them. While Kanne finds a compelling amount of creativity in Mozart’s phrase construction, Marx finds them symmetrical and predictable, qualities he sees the new art of Beethoven and his contemporaries as transcending. Recalling his tripartite model of recent musical history, Marx divides Mozart’s “melodic” age from the current one, rendering Mozart antiquated and Beethoven modern. These qualities could be seen in their respective musical styles: Mozart’s music held a harmonious “honest” contract with the listener with its balanced phrase structure, while Beethoven’s operated with more imagination by experimenting with such a contract. Marx does not necessarily think this is how the style appeared as such in Mozart’s own time—it constitutes a 87 Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, 106. “Wir finden . . . den Gedanken durch die gleichmässige Bildung . . . so sicher und befriedigend abgeschlossen, dass in ihm selber gar kein Trieb zum weitern Fortschreiten liegt.” Marx, Die Lehre von der musikalische Komposition, praktisch theoretisch, 3:258. 88 “Beethoven liebt dieses regelmässige Correspondiren und Wiederkehren bekanntlich (besonders in seinen neuern Schöpfungen) nicht, was zu seinen Style auch unläugbar besser passt. Er weiss entweder den Nachsatz anders zu lösen, als ihn der Hörer erwartet hat, oder er spinnt (noch öfter) gleich seinen Satz so an, dass er keines Nachsatzes bedarf, sondern ungehindert und frei wegströmt.” Marx, “Recension: Quatuor pour le Piano-Forte, avec accompagnement de Violon, Alto et Violoncelle, composé etc. par Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Oeuvr. 1,” 169. 193 retrospective interpretation. Elsewhere he claims that art works of the past held meaning no longer necessary for the contemporary age: Nowadays it is said that Palestrina had written only (!) chords and Bach only (!) fugues, that their works do not often convey what ought not to be missed in our age. But does great meaning not live in these chords? Did each one not receive its meaning from nature? Is the idea of a fugue not how different individuals join together in dialogue about one idea, each essentially insistent on its particularity yet all harmonically united?89 Even so, Marx presents a progressive narrative, whose present moment was made possible by the historical shift not only in texture, but in possibilities of phrase structure as well.90 Marx continues his defense of Beethoven by countering a comment from Ludwig Tieck, characterizing the romantic author’s worldview as decidedly conservative with regard to Beethoven’s imaginative style. Marx claims: It is without a doubt why (casually stated) Tieck wanted to reproach Beethoven in his newest musical novella when he writes: “Beethoven is too aphoristic. He allows no idea to come to maturity, instead destroying such an idea on every occasion with a new one, and consequently he does not have enough unity in general.” Yet with respect to the total impression—and this is probably the most important thing—one can hardly deny Beethoven the greatest unity as that of Mozart.91 89 “Es ist bald gesagt, Palästrina habe nur (!) Akkorde und Bach nur (!) Fugen geschrieben, es ist leicht erkannt, dass ihre Werke manches nicht enthalten, was in den unsrigen nicht vermisst werden darf. Aber lebt in diesen Akkorden nicht ein grosser Sinn? Hat nicht jeder aus der Natur seine Bedeutung erhalten? Ist nicht schon die Idee der Fugenform: wie verschiedene Individualitäten sich über Einen Gedanken im Dialog vereinen, jede in ihrer Eigenthümlichkeit beharrend und dennoch alle harmonisch geeinigt, wichtig?” Marx, “Andeutung des Standpunktes der Zeitung,” 447. Like Forkel, he argues for a historical unfolding of musical progress. 90 In his Lehre, Marx would celebrate the “open consequent phrase” as an advancement beyond the seemingly rigid structure of periods and sentences that end with an authentic cadence: See Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven, 107. 91 “Das ist es auch ohne Zweifel, was (beiläufig gesagt), Tiek Beethoven in seiner neusten MusikNovelle, hat zum Vorwurf machen wollen, wenn er sagt: Beethoven sei zu aphoristisch, er lass keinen Gedanken zur Reife kommen, zerstöre denselben vielmehr immer wieder durch einen neuen, und hab mithin auch in Allgemeinen nicht genug Einheit. Was aber den Total-Eindruck betrifft, — und das ist denn doch wohl die Hauptsache, — so kann man Beethoven die höchste Einheit eben so wenig absprechen, als Mozart.” Marx, “Recension: Quatuor pour le Piano-Forte, avec accompagnement de Violon, Alto et Violoncelle, composé etc. par Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Oeuvr. 1,” 169. 194 The twelve-year span between Phantasus and Marx’s review was immense. The elegiac moderns did not yet see such a divide between the styles of Mozart and Beethoven. Marx drags Tieck into the fray, feeling compelled to defend Beethoven in response to a Phantasus passage in which the character Ernst—immediately following his discussion of the glories of Palestrina’s masses and the Orphean failures of Mozart’s symphonies (see chapter 3)— claims: “If we dare to call Mozart manic, then the ingenious Beethoven often cannot be distinguished from a raving lunatic who rarely pursues a musical idea or acquiesces to it, but rather jumps through the most violent transitions and seeks as if to escape the imagination itself in restless conflict.”92 Marx misrepresents and reprimands Tieck in order to celebrate Beethoven’s experimental style, but at the expense of downplaying Tieck’s elegiac reading of contemporary musical practice writ large and overlooking the narrative form of the Phantasus as a dialogue among characters with polarizing viewpoints. Marx also disregards Tieck’s reading of Mozart and sees the author as merely (and unfairly) reproaching Beethoven’s compositional choices. Within Tieck’s elegiac discourse, Beethoven’s impetuousness is a modern tendency, a feature only different in degree, not quality, from Mozart’s compositions: each composer creates unstable music and each relies on some sort of perversion of nature. Marx’s commentary demonstrates how fleeting the elegiac discourse was. In just twelve years new music seemed freer than the music the elegiac moderns initially construed as radically unstable. Marx also connects modern compositional style’s radical 92 “Wenn wir Mozart wahnsinnig nennen dürfen, so ist der genialische Beethoven oft nicht vom Rasenden zu unterscheiden, der selten einen musikalischen Gedanken verfolgt und sich in ihm beruhigt, sondern durch die gewaltthätigsten Uebergänge springt und der Phantasie gleichsam selbst im rastlosen Kampfe zu entfliehen sucht.” Tieck, Phantasus: eine Sammlung von Mährchen, Erzählungen, Schauspielen und Novellen, 1:470. 195 advancements directly to phrase structure: Beethoven trumps Mozart, according to Marx, because he employs dissolving consequents or eliminates the need for predictable consequent phrases altogether. Friedrich Schiller notes two different sentimental stances in his essay “Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung,” an elegiac stance—taken up in the last chapter—and a satirical one. While an elegiac modern mourned the loss of a harmonious antiquity, where there was no division between the self and society, a satirical modern acknowledged the loss through mockery.93 In a way, Schiller’s satirical stance is embodied by Marx’s Beethoven, who scorns the well-trodden phraseological conventions that formerly held weight in musical works and instead reveals the idea of convention itself as a lost ideal. Of course, the “antiquity” Beethoven ridicules is Mozart’s compositional era from just a few decades ago rather than some quasi-mythical Renaissance-age Christendom. But the idea of mockery belongs in the discourse of aesthetic modernity, constituting a distancing from convention. A moment of musical mockery was a crack in the façade of a work, a moment begging for an analytical explanation. Yet the mockery is not one sharply criticizing the present order, as it was in Schiller’s “Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung.” What changes in the first few decades following the elegiac moderns, at least within musical discourse, is that critics no longer easily relate musical structure and form to its social framework. To Marx, Beethoven mocks musical conventions of old. Unlike Tieck’s Mozart, the fractured modern style as embodied by Beethoven is not a bellwether of political instability, but instead an internal response to styles before it. Music ultimately no longer serves as a commentary on 93 Schiller, “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry,” 205. 196 the status of social relations, but merely a commentary on itself, on its own past, on its own materials.94 94 For more on the question of music’s relation to politics in the period, see chapter 1 of Garratt, Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner. CONCLUSION Marx’s early commentary on Beethoven’s style would cast a long shadow, which first and foremost would affect the remainder of his storied career as a critic, compositional pedagogue, and biographer. By the beginning of Marx’s career in the 1820s, almost all of Beethoven’s music had already been composed and Mozart had been dead for over three decades. The critic’s commentary on the new age of music, with Beethoven at the helm, would be immortalized later on in his influential Die Lehre von der musikalische Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch (1837–47)—where he explicates the principles of sonata form utilizing examples from Beethoven’s piano sonatas—through to the end of his career with his Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen (1859), by which point the apotheosis of musical style that he found in Beethoven’s compositions was long gone.1 Looking to the decades that followed, Kanne’s Versuch marked a highpoint for the reception of Mozart as well as the practice of analysis itself. Indeed, it was one of the most extensive self-standing analytical essays prior to the writings of Heinrich Schenker at the end of the nineteenth century. Kanne’s analysis also represents an early chapter, following Hoffmann’s Fifth Symphony 1810 review, in the tradition of what Ian Bent terms hermeneutic analysis. It marks the end of the primacy of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung with the introduction of other periodicals that would shape the musical world, including Marx’s Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and Schumann’s Leipzig-based 1 For representative writings, see Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven. 198 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik whose first issue appeared in 1834. Analytical criticism would flourish in other languages as well, including French with Berlioz as a leading figure.2 Marx’s and Kanne’s writings, as well as those of the critics around them, reveal that the legacy of the early analytical tradition touches well beyond analytical discourse proper, having indelibly shaped future understandings of what would become the Classical style. For the last two centuries, one of the major roles of analysis has been to categorize which composers belonged to Beethoven’s stylistic break from the past. Writers would indeed continue to privilege Beethoven as the prototypical imaginative composer who accomplished the turn away from tradition, and his music remains an analytical benchmark of scholarship. But with the focus on texture as the bearer of stylistic development as evinced in chapter four, writers such as D. F. Tovey, Adolf Sandberger, Guido Adler, and Charles Rosen would collectively revive Haydn and Mozart, and lump them with Beethoven, often through the use of analysis to confirm their place in the Western musical canon.3 The legacy of the early years of analysis also influenced music historiography more generally. The analytical tradition after Marx would continue to place Beethoven’s music at the center of its inquiry, and in so doing would accomplish two ideological tasks: confirming the value of Beethoven’s music and the value of the analytical tools used to examine it. Scott Burnham writes: “By analyzing tonal music with the analytical tools and theoretical assumptions we have inherited from [nineteenth-century] theorists . . . we 2 On the analytical criticism of Berlioz and Schumann, see Bent, Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. 3 See Tovey, “Haydn’s Chamber Music”; Webster, Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style; Adler, “Haydn and the Viennese Classical School”; Rosen, The Classical Style. 199 implicitly claim that Beethoven’s music most closely resembles the way music ought to go.”4 The analytical values created in criticism as far back as Forkel and Vogler confirm the privileging of motivic development and comprehensible key relations, as well as a more abstract balancing between main material and episodic detours to maintain a semblance of self-organization with a certain amount of variety or, perhaps, freedom. As Rose Subotnik has observed, these values constituting “structural listening” have led to the privileging of German instrumental music writ large.5 Following Subotnik, musicologists over the past few decades have recognized that these values have diminished the importance of opera and other vocal genres in the nineteenth century, as well as both German and non-German instrumental composers who were relegated to Kleinmeister status or worse since their music did not display such features.6 Ultimately the early analytical tradition is far too complex and multifaceted for contemporary scholars to carry out some sort of postmortem in order to locate the moment at which European culture and its artistic life became exclusionary, though that has not stopped many from trying.7 For instance, J. N. Forkel’s writings on the rondo (see chapter 2) seem to be fashioned in response to a particular aesthetic issue embedded in the scholar’s community, and just thirty years later E. T. A. Hoffmann practiced analysis (see chapters 3 and 4) with a noticeably different agenda in mind, responding to a crisis about 4 Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 112. Subotnik, “Toward a Deconstruction of Structural Listening: A Critique of Schoenberg, Adorno, and Stravinsky.” 6 See, for instance, Morrow and Churgin, The Eighteenth-Century Symphony; Taruskin, Music in the Nineteenth Century. 7 For recent manifestations of this maneuver, see Knapp, Making Light: Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism; Mathew, “Interesting Haydn: On Attention’s Materials.” 5 200 music’s apparent irrelevance in modern society. As presented throughout this study, the narrative of early analysis centers on the relationship between musical form and meaning, an investigation that could be branched out to the period’s broader aesthetic intellectual movement. In terms of Hegel’s aesthetic theory, this type of inquiry, paired with religion and philosophy, served a vital educational function to comprehend how human freedom appeared in the estranged material world of modernity. According to Terry Pinkard: What drives Hegel’s type of developmental story is a self-incurred dissatisfaction with the types of agency constituted by collective attempts at living out particular kinds of self-conception . . . Art, like religion and philosophy, is a collective practice of self-education about this, a way of collectively reflecting on what it means to be human.8 From a Hegelian perspective, the critical network over the course of the long eighteenth century that established the origins of analysis belongs to a larger group of figures— including philosophers and critics—who sought to clarify what exactly modern life was all about, or how exactly human agency fit into the social totality. The analytical work of Forkel, Hoffmann, as well as their critic-colleagues, then, served a larger purpose than to inscribe musical values. After all, at every turn, their writings engage with the weighty sociocultural issues of their time and offer thoughtful responses to concerns highlighted in contemporaneous philosophical discourse. Still, to be sure, these writings did establish musical values as well. Perhaps too well, as music scholars today are still contending with their legacy. 8 Pinkard, “Symbolic, Classical, and Romantic Art,” 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1798–1825. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat. Vienna: Strauss, 1817–1824. Anon. “Michael Haydns sechs Sonaten für Geige und Bratsche.” In Augsburger musikalische Merkur, 19–26. Augsburg: G. W. F. Späth, 1795. ———. “Musikalisch-kritische bibliothek, von Joh. Nicolaus Forkel. Erster Band. 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